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AUTHOR: 


PRICE,  ELI  KIRK 


TITLE: 


ANOTHER  PHASE  OF 
MODERN  .... 


PLACE: 


DATE: 


[PHILADELPHIA] 

[  1 872] 


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Price,  Eli  K[irki  •   . 

Another  phase  of  modem  philosophy  read 
I  before  the  American  philosophical  society,  March  Ist, 


1872 


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ANOTHER  PHASE  OF  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

By  E.  K.  Price. 

{Read  before  the  American  Philosophical  Society^  March  Ist,  1872.) 

**  All  flesh  is  not  the  same  flesh."  "There  is  one  flesh  of  men  and 
another  of  beasts."  "  What  is  a  man  profited  if  he  shall  *  *  *  lose 
his  own  soul?" 

Those  who  have  lived  through  nearly  three -fourths  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  and  witnessed  the  many  useful  and  brilliant  discoveries  that 
have  illustrated  the  past  two  ages,  may  not  safely  venture  to  discourage 
the  boldness  of  any  investigations  that  are  legitimately  pursued.  Nor 
will  any  one  properly  criticise  or  censure  those  who  in  the  main  are  doing 
good  service  to  science,  unless  he  clearly  perceives  that  the  great  canon  of 
philosophizing,  which  all  must  acknowledge,  has  not  been  duly  observed. 
When  such  case  occurs  in  matters  of  highest  importance,  it  then  becomes 
the  duty  of  the  humblest  to  speak  out  in  correction  of  what  he  believes  to 
be  error,  in  the  name  of  an  all  pervading  philosophy,  and  in  behalf  of  our 
common  humanity,  according  to  his  conviction  and  ability. 

The  first  lesson  the  scientist  should  learn  is  that  of  the  limit  of  the 
human  understanding,  beyond  which  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to  investi- 
gate, and  to  recognize  as  inviolable  those  secrets  which  the  Creator  has 
chosen  to  reserve  to  Himself,  as  to  which  there  is  no  response  to  interro- 
gation. The  second,  is  to  make  sure  of  all  the  facts  requisite  to  the 
ascertainment  of  truth,  and  thence  to  draw  only  such  conclusion  as  the 
known  facts  will  justify. 

The  physicists  of  this  century  have  studied  life  from  its  physical  basis, 
and  have  too  often  made  the  life  and  the  mind  of  man  the  product  of 
matter.  I  propose  to  discuss  this  theory,  particularly  in  review  of  Pro- 
fessor Huxley's  Physical  Basis  of  Life,  both  to  show  that  he  has  drawn 
his  conclusions  upon  inadequate  facts,  and  that  he  has  left  out  of  view 
the  facts  that  shew  the  distinctive  nature  and  operations  of  the  life  and 
of  the  mind. 

Let  us  first  consider  a  few  of  the  subjects  having  a  bearing  upon  his 
theory,  wherein  the  limit  to  knowledge  is  recognizable,  beyond  which 
further  research  is  sure  to  be  baffled.  Nothing  is  more  familiar  to  us 
than  our  own  life.  It  is  that  self  we  should  best  know  ;  and  we  can  and 
do  know  many  things  about  it ;  indeed  all  about  it,  except  the  mystery 
how  it  can  possibly  be,  and  can  carry  on  its  own  functions.  We  can  see 
and  dissect  our  bodily  structure  of  bones,  joints,  muscles,  tendons  ;  brain, 
nerves,  tissues ;  heart,  arteries,  veins,  etc.  We  see  and  feel  the  body's 
functions  as  they  are  carried  on.  We  see  how  it  is  fed  with  food,  and 
how  the  circulations  are  kept  going  and  the  strength  is  maintained ;  and 
know  that  the  food  taken  is  transmuted  into  the  living  being.  We  are 
invited  to  eat  and  drink  to  appease  hunger  and  thirst,  and  thereby  we 
both  avert  greater  pain,  and  enjoy  pleasure.  The  food  is  dissolved  by  the 
gastric  juice  secreted  by  the  stomach,  and  is  then  chyme.    This  in  its  de- 


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■cent  receives  the  juice  of  the  pancreas,  and  the  bile  from  the  gall-bladder 
of  the  liver.    The  action  of  the  stomach  keeps  its  contents  in  motion  ; 
and  one  portion,  unfitted  to  enter  the  life-process,  is  rejected  into  the 
draught,   the  other  called  chpk,  is  a  milky  fluid,   which  the   lacteaU 
opening  into  the  intestines  imbibe  and  carry  to  the  thoracic  duct  and 
into  the  venous  system.     The  heart  propels  the  crimson  blood  that  is  re- 
turned to  it  by  the  veins,  together  with  the  contributions  of  chyle,  upon 
the  lungs,  where  it  meets  the  oxygen  of  the  air,  is  decarbonized,  and  be- 
comes scarlet ;  and  this  bright  red  blood,  being  returned  to  the  heart,  is 
propelled  through  the  arteries  to  the  extremities  of  the  body,  freighted 
with  all  the  material  the  system  demands  ;  the  corpuscles  for  bone,  muscle, 
tendon,  tissue,  etc.,  and  delivers  them  as  and  where  wanted,  and  from  the 
extremities  the  blood  is  returned  through  the  veins  to  the  heart.    The 
process  of  life  is  carried  on  by  ceaseless  pulsations.     The  heart  throbs  ; 
the  arteries  expand  and  contract ;  the  stomach,  the  diaphragm  and  chest 
expand  and  contract ;  the  lungs  are  kept  in  play,  and  we  breathe ;  the 
intestines  are  operated  by  the  peristaltic  motion,  and  the  glands  and  ab- 
sorbents are  ever  at  work.    All  this  we  perceive,  or  the  anatomist  or 
physiologist  does  for  us,  and  to  him  all  is  as  familiar  as  things  of  daily 
observation.     But  can  he  tell  us  what  life  is,  or  how  it  acts  with  an  intel- 
ligence surpassingly  wonderful  ?    "We  see  in  this  process  that  the  food  has 
become  part  of  the  living  being  ;  and  it  will  remain  such  so  long  as  it  is 
useful  to  the  creature,  and  when  any  part  becomes  useless  in  the  animal 
economy  it  is  rejected,  so  that  after  a  few  years  the  whole  system  is  com- 
posed of  new  materials,  but  the  same  life  of  identical  consciousness  has 
survived ;  and  may  survive  more  than  ten  entire  changes  of  the  life- mol- 
ecules.    It  is  the  life  in  the  body  and  only  the  life  that  has  had  power  to 
take  in,  digest,  and  assimilate  the  organic  food  we  eat  and  make  it  part 
of  itself.     Why  or  how  the  thing  we  call  life  can  do  all  this  no  micro- 
scope reveals  to  our  sight ;  no  skill  of  dissection  can  reach  it ;  no  cunning 
of  thought  can  teach  us.    We  only  witness  the  process  and  the  fact  of  life. 
The  Power  that  created  the  life,  and  endowed  it  with  its  wonderful  in- 
telligence has  chosen  to  keep  this  secret  to  Himself;  and  though  it  is 
ourself,  and  we  are  always  conscious  to  its  presence  and  action  while  we 
live,  we  can  never  tell  what  it  is,  or  how  it  lives.     We  must  accept  it  as 
an  ultimate  fact ;  but  from  that  fact  we  may,  if  we  are  logical,  infer  that 
it  had  an  Author,  who  could  create  it,  and  yet  permit  us  never  to  know 
his  secret,  though  that  secret  be  our  own  life.     The  unknowable  is  thus 
dwelt  upon  not  only  to  heighten  our  conception  of  Deity,  but  to  shew 
where  time  and  labor  would  be  spent  in  vain ;  and  also,  because  it  is  salu- 
tary that  all  who  investigate  science  should  do  so  with  the  humbling 
consciousness  that  all  that  is  known  bears  a  very  small  proportion  to  that 
which  here  cannot  be  known.     Yet,  from  the  known,  from  the  evidence 
of  its  design,  and  power,   and  beneficence ;  its  obedience  to  law,   and 
harmonious  movements ;  its  grandeur  and  glory,  we  surely  infer  a  Creator, 
Almighty  and  Omniscient. 


Let  us  go  back  a  stage  in  the  being  of  this  life,  whose  source  and  nature  we 
are  invited  by  Dr.  Huxley  to  investigate.    From  a  vitalized  ovum,  seem- 
ingly but  a  speck  of  jelly,  the  foetal  being  is  developed  into  a  body,  with 
every  part  prepared  to  begin  the  hardening  process  of  breathing  life. 
Until  birth  it  derives  its  nourishment  from  the  mother  by  the  umbilical 
cord  attached  to  its  navel.     In  due  time  it  is  expelled  by  nature's  timely 
effort,  that  child  and  mother  may  continue  to  live.     The  physical  liga- 
ment that  united  them  is  severed ;  and  the  separate  life  begins.  .  The 
child  now  breathes  for  itself,  and  takes  food  into  its  own  stomach.     Still 
the  nourishment  comes  from  the  mother,  and  nature  has  provided  it  as 
wanted  in  her  breast.    At  those  fountains  the  child  drinks  by  a  process 
its  instinct  has  already  taught  it.     Its  food  is  that   adapted  to  enter  into 
its  circulation  and  nourish  its  life.     The  lacteal  ducts  absorb  the  milk  and 
carry  it  into  the  current  of  life.     Why  this  should  all  be  we  readily  un- 
derstand ;  but  how  this  harmonious  process  takes  place  with  such  sure 
observance  and  beneficent  end  we  cannot  penetrate.     We  say  that  nature 
and  instinct  do  that  we  so  admiringly  behold.     But  if  nature  had  an 
Author,  then  it  was  God  who  does  it,  to  continue  our  race.     Yet  He  re- 
tains the  secret  He  chooses  not  to  reveal. 

But  we  must  recede  yet  further  to  reach  the  physical  beginning  of  life. 
In  animals  and  vegetables  of  highest  organization,  we  find  that  there  are 
two  sexes  requisite  to  the  reproduction  of  life.    We  will  take  the  illustra- 
tion from  the  vegetable  kingdom,  whence  the  inference  may  be  made  to 
the  animal,  including  man.     When  the  sun's  warmth  revisits  us,  and 
spring  has  come  with  her  showers,  we  have  also  the  flowers.    These  are 
not  only  for  our  pleasure  and  refinement  of  taste  ;  but  they  are  nature's 
bridal  habiliments.     The  two  sexes  may  be  found  in  the  same  blossom  ; 
or  in  separate  blossoms  on  the  same,  or  diff"erent  trees.     The  base  of  the 
pistils  contains  the  female  ovules,  made  but  to  perish  in  sterility  unless 
they  shall  receive  the  pollen  formed  in  the  anthers  of  the  stamens  ;  but 
are  not  permitted  to  perish,  for  the  breezes  are  ever  transporting  the  dust 
of  the  pollen  to  the  awaiting  ovules  ;  and  the  busy  bee  and  insects,  as  they 
flit  from  flower  to  flower,  assist  in  nature's  requirement.    In  the  speck  of 
male  dust  is  the  beginning  of  life,  to  find  its  necessary  receptacle  in  the 
female  molecule  of  matter.     The  ovules  are  fructified  ;  the  flower  fades 
and  dies,  for  it  has  fulfilled  its  office  ;  but  the  seed  grows  and  matures,  and 
is  the  germ  of  another  life,  that  shall  be  like  unto  the  parent.     All  this  is 
watched,   and  surely  observed ;  it  is  beautiful  to  behold,  and  of  most 
beneficent  purpose,  for  without  it  all  vegetable  and  animal  life  would 
cease  upon  the  earth.     But  the  ultimate  secret  who  can  find  out  ?    Why 
the  pollen  should  be  requisite  to  fructification  ;  how  it  should  have  the 
power  thus  to  impart  life,  man  has  never  found  out,  and  probably  will 
never  discover.     We  have  looked  upon  the  renewed  vernal  life  of  the 
vegetable  kingdom  with  sympathy,  and  in  that  sympathy  we  have  invested 
nature  with  our  own  feelings,  and  she  has  seemed  to  us  sensient  of  joy. 
And  now,  returning  to  ourselves,  as  subjects  of  the  like  process,  we  behold 


the  fruit  to  be  not  only  new  life,  but  in  its  consequences,  to  be  man's  chief 
resource  for  all  his  happiness ;  for  hence  spring,  the  comforts  and  refine- 
ments that  belong  to  the  family  ;  the  love  of  wife  and  chUdren  ;  intell^t- 
ual  culture,  developed  affections ;  and  the  training  of  human  souls.  We 
have  been  thus  led  by  a  pleasurable  instinct,  and  a  virtuous  obedience, 
to  continue  our  race,  and  have  found  therein  our  best  welfare  and  highest 
excellence.    God  has  done  this,  yet  has  kept  His  secret* 

But  science  will  ever  interrogate  nature;  does  bo  boldly  but  not 
blamably.    She  will  with  telescope  ceaselessly  sweep  the  heavens  ;  she  will 
with  microscope  untiringly  explore  a  boundless  life  that  every  where  teems 
unseen  by  the  naked  eye  ;  she  ever  applies  her  chemical  tests,  and  analysis 
as  keen  of  the  sharpened  human  intellect.  Her  researches  are  well  rewarded ; 
but  she  may  not  know  all.    For  often  it  happens,  that  "Seeing  ye  shall 
see,  and  shall  not  perceive."  With  the  microscope  and  scalpel  the  sources 
of  Ufe  are  explored,  and  science  announces  that  all  life,  in  the  higher  organ- 
izations, comes  and  is  maintained  by  the  blood  propelled  from  the  heart. 
Thence  came  the  parental  germs  that  have  met  and  started  the  embryonic 
life ;  thence  has  come  every  increment  that  has  given  the  body  growth 
from  the  gelatinous  germ  to  the  mature  man.      You  have  traced  the 
physical  being  back  to  nearly  its  starting  point,  and  found  its  component 
parts  all  to  have  been  molecules  of  matter,  or  corpuscles,  or  cells  in  the 
blood.    These  the  physiologist  declares  to  be  the  physical  basis  of  life. 
We  may  not  venture  to  deny  this  conclusion,  for  his  dissections  and  mag- 
nified sight  have  revealed  what  he  describes,  and  it  comports  with  our 
observation.     But  chemical  tests  can  but  imperfectly  verify  his  observa- 
tions, for  they  can  only  be  applied  to  matter  dead,  and  when  Ufe  has 
ceased  to  resist  nature's  chemistry,  that  chemistry  is  quick  to  change 
the  material  which  had  been  the  living  source  of  life's  supply.    Tbe 
assisted  eye  has  seen  in  that  crimson  current,  says  Huxley,  "innumerable 
multitudes  of  little,  circulai-,  discoidal  bodies,  or  corpuscles,  which  float 
in  it  and  give  it  its  color,  (and)  a  comparatively  small  number  of  colorless 
corpuscles,  of  somewhat  larger  si^e  and  very  irregular  shape.       Huxley 
speaks  of  these  as  marvelously  active,  changing  their  form  with  great 
rapidity,  as  if  independent  organisms ;  and  their  substance  he  calls  proto- 
plmrn.    These  he  calls  the  units  of  the  human  body  ;  and  says,  "  Beast 
and  fowl,  reptile  and  fish,  mollusk,  worm,  and  polyp,  are  all  composed 
of  structural  units  of  the  same  character,  namely,  masses  of  protoplasm 
with  a  nucleus.*'     **  Thus  it  becomes  clear  that  all  living  powers  are  cog- 
nate and  that  all  living  forms  are  fundamentally  of  one  character."  Thus 
.  while  Darwin  would  make  all  living  beings  related  by  descent  from  a 
common  parent,  Huxley  would  make  aU  to  be  related  as  creatures  of  the 
same  blood. 

Kow  the  only  reliable  basis  for  such  conclusions  seems  to  be  the  mag- 
nified vision,  limitedly  applied,  revealing  similarity  of  looks  and  activities. 
The  elements  of  the  universal  protoplasm  are  stated  to  be  "carbon, 
hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  nitrogen."    But  it  is  not  shown  or  said  that  these 


exist  in  the  like  proportion  in  the  protoplasm  of  different  creatures, 
which  might  explain  much  of  the  difference  there  is  in  their  structure. 
Thus  if  the  proportion  of  oxygen  in  the  air  was  considerably  increased  all 
life  would  be  burnt  up  ;  and  if  the  proportion  of  nitrogen  were  consider- 
ably increased  in  the  atmosphere  we  breathe,  all  life  would  be  extinguished. 
Without  much  more  observation  than  appears  to  have  been  made,  science 
cannot  insist  upon  the  sweeping  generalization  Dr.  Huxley  has  made, 
that  all  living  creatures  are  cognate.  His  facts  are  few,  and  the  theory  de- 
duced runs  counter  to  the  common  observations  of  men.  Likeness  in  the 
looks  of  the  white  corpuscles,  without  shewing  of  what  they  consist,  or 
actually  do,  is  not  proof  adequate  to  the  induction.  The  ova  in  the 
ovarium  of  living  creatures,  and  the  initiate  particle  that  vitalizes  them, 
may  appear  much  alike  under  tbe  microscope  ;  but  from  the  ovum  of  one 
comes  a  fish,  from  another  a  fowl,  from  another  a  beast,  and  from  another 
man.  It  is  inferable  that  from  the  germ  upwards  the  structures  of  these 
creatures  have  had  various  elements  and  in  differing  proportions.  Were 
it  not  so,  creatures  so  diverse  in  form  and  nature,  it  seems  not  reasonable 
to  believe,  could  be  the  result.  This  objection  Huxley  does  not  attempt 
to  explain. 

Again,  the  different  kinds  of  food  that  animals  live  upon  shew  that  the 
nourishment  that  feeds  their  life,  in  its  first  vitalized  stage,  called  by  Huxley 
protoplasm,  must  vary  in  the  nature  and  proportions  of  its  elements. 
Some  live  on  animal  food  only ;  others  upon  grasses  and  grain  only  ;  man 
upon  animal  food,  grain  and  vegetables.  Some  can  eat  with  impunity 
things  poisonous  to  others.  Some,  too,  secrete  deadly  poison  from  the 
material  within  them.  The  qualities  of  the  things  eaten  or  drank  must 
enter  into  the  circulation  and  growth,  and  these  must  furnish  molecules 
or  cells  of  qualities  such  as  the  body  demands.  Portions  of  food  are  to  be 
rejected  ;  first  without  entering  the  circulation,  and  afterwards  through 
the  secreting  glands.  The  breath  of  the  drunkard  shews  that  alcohol  has 
entered  his  circulation  and  is  exhaled  from  his  lungs ;  it  is  shewn  in  the 
capillaries  of  his  face  ;  and  by  dissection  it  is  perceived  in  the  brain.  The 
nursing  mother  who  has  taken  medicine  transmits  a  portion  of  it  to  her 
child,  by  the  milk  secreted  from  her  blood.  Many  medicines  are  admin- 
istered with  the  view  to  their  effect  through  the  blood  circulation.  These 
enter  the  vital  current  and  produce  their  known  effects. 

The  cold  blooded  and  warm  blooded  animals  ;  the  edible  and  poisonous  ; 
cannot  be  taken  to  be  creatures  of  the  same  substance  ;  and  though  they 
may  have  been  built  up  from  a  fluid  circulation,  it  cmnot  reasonably  be 
inferred  that  they  have  been  composed  of  the  same  elements  ;  and  if  not 
of  the  same  elements,  the  protoplastic  theory  to  unify  life  becomes  base- 
less :  "All  flesh  is  not  the  same  flesh." 

But  if  the  vitalized  ova  and  protoplasm  that  start  and  build  up  life 
were  homogeneous,  or  approximately  so,  only  the  more  wonderful  must 
be  the  power  of  the  life  which  can  construct  creatures  of  the  diversity  we 
behold  ill  sea,  or  air,  or  upon  the  land,  from  the  same  elements.     From 


j^ 


countless  globules  the  work  is  done.    But  each  living  creature  is  to  re- 
produce its  like,  and  is  ever  to  reproduce  only  that ;  such  is  its  mission, 
and  it  unerringly  fulfils  that  mission.     Either  the  life  does  this,  or  He 
that  created  the  life.    It  is  no  known  property  of  matter  to  produce  life. 
And  the  more  the  elemental  materials  are  alike,  the  more  each  life  must 
do ;  the  more  it  must  rule  over  the  materials  to  produce  the  diversified 
results ;  and  the  less  the  materials  could  have  had  mastery  over  them. 
We  know  well  what  the  life  appears  to  do,  for  she  does  all  under  our  eyes 
and  within  us  ;  yet  she  dwells  herself  in  impenetrable  mystery.     What 
she  is,  and  how  she  can  carry  on  her  operations,  ao  man  may  fully  know. 
The  keenest  in  scrutiny  are  not  agreed  as  to  the  import  of  what  they  see, 
and  Dr.  Huxley  has  not  explained  whence  the  colorless  corpuscles  he 
calls  protoplasm  are  derived  ;  does  not  say  whether  they  are  particles  of 
food  or  chyle  in  transition  to  blood  corpuscles,  as  that  which  is  more 
vitalized,  or  whether  they  are  derived  from  the  latter ;  or  whether  red 
blood  contributes  any  material  for  the  construction  of  the  body.     The 
proportion  of  the  colorless  corpuscles  to  the  red  is  less  than  three  in  one 
thousand  (Dr.  Carpenter's  Physiology,  sec.  15).   To  make  the  few  colorless 
corpuscles  suffice  for  the  consummation  witnessed,  seems  cause  inadequate 
to  the  results,  and  is  to  make  the  vastly  greater  mass  of  red  blood  useless 
in  the  process,  except  it  be  merely  as  a  tide  to  bear  along  the  vital  cor- 
puscles to  the  places  of  destined  use.     He  gives  no  reason  why  the  white 
should  be  the  exclusive  material,  or  as  he  compares  it,  why  the  clay  or 
brick,  with  which  the  house  is  to  be  built,  is  alone  to  be  used,  though  that 
house  is  to  contain  also  all  other  requisites  to  comfort;  the  plastering,  doors, 
windows,  floors,  furniture  and  upholstery.     It  appears  to  be  an  assump- 
tion requiring  proof,  that  the  few  white  particles  alone  contribute  to  form 
and  repair  the  differing  parts,  the  bone,  muscle,  tendon,  tissue,  etc.,  and 
contrary  to  different  ends  to  be  subserved,  and  to  the  universal  economy 
of  nature  that  does  nothing  uselessly.     These  different  parts  demand 
particles  of  like  nature  to  each  respectively.     We  know,  too,  that  the 
flesh  may  be  changed  in  color  and  quality  by  the  material  fed,  as  the 
feeders  of  stock  well  know  ;  and  this  seems  proof  that  the  elements  that 
nourish  and  fatten  are  not  protoplastically  the  same  in  substance  or  color. 

Dr.  Carpenter  speaks  of  the  red  corpuscles  as  "especially  concerned  in 
preparing  pabulum  for  the  nervous  and  muscular  tissues,  the  former  of 
which  is  distinguished  by  the  presence  of  phosphorized  fats,  and  the 
latter  by  the  remarkable  predominance  of  the  potash  salts  ;  and  this  view 
derives  further  confirmation  from  the  fact,  that  a  flesh  diet  seems  to  have 
a  decided  effect  in  the  formation  of  red  corpuscles."  CPhysiology,  Sec. 
160.)  And  he  devotes  some  paragraphs  to  show  that  the  colorless  cor- 
puscles are  but  another  stage  of  the  evolution  of  the  red  corpuscles.  (Sec. 
163,  etc.  Again  he  says,  **  That  the  corpuscles,  however,  both  red  and 
colorless,  are  living  cells,  and  that,  like  other  cells,  they  possess  vital  en- 
dowments peculiar  to  themselves,  is  not  now  questioned  by  any  one.'* 
(lb.  Sec.  196.) 


We  are  to  go  deeper  than  a  certain  likeness  in  protoplasms,  to  under- 
stand so  much  of  life  as  we  are  permitted  to  know.     Dr.  Huxley  in  his 
article  entitled,  *' Yeast"  disclaims  having  said  anything  new  in  his  lecture 
upon  "The  Physical  Basis  of  Life."    He  is,  however,  responsible  for 
what  he  adopts,  and  for  the  breadth  and  length  of  his  deductions      Pro- 
toplasm he  considers  the  basis  of  life,  and  that  it  is  a  physical  basis  •  and 
he  assigns  no  other  than  this  as  cause  of  life,  and  makes  the  life  but  a 
property  of  the  protoplasm.     He  says,   "If  the  properties  of  water  may 
be  properly  said  to  result  from  the  nature  and  disposition  of  its  compo- 
nent molecules,  I  can  find  no  intelligible  ground  for  refusing  to  say  that 
the  properties  of  protoplasm  result  from  the  nature  and  disposition  of  its 
molecules."     Nature  is  deemed  exuberant  of  one  aliment,  called  proto- 
plasm,  that  supports  all  the  life  of  the  world,   whether  received  by  the 
roots  mto  the  circulation  of  the  trees,  or  by  the  stomach  into  the  circu- 
lations of  animals ;  "  a  unity  of  power  or  faculty  ;  a  unity  of  form,  and 
a  unity  of  substantial  composition  ;  does  pervade  the  whole  living  world  " 
He  continues,  ^'AU  the  multifarious  and  complicated  activities  of  man 
are  comprehensible  under  three  categories  :  either  they  are  immediately 
directed  towards  the  maintenance  and  development  of  the  body,  or  they 
effect  transitory  changes  in  the  relative  positions  of  parts  of  the  body  or 
they  tend  towards  the  continuance  of  the  species.     Even  those  manifes- 
tations  of  intellect,  of  feeling,  and  of|will,  which  we  rightly  name  the 
higher  faculties,  are  not  excluded  from  this  classification."     "  This  pro- 
toplasm exhibits  the  phenomena  of  life."     These  extracts,  and  the  drift 
of  the  lecture  show  that  the  author  is  not  merely  showing  what  is  the 
physical  basis  of  life,  but  is  attempting  to  show  that  life  is  but  a  property 
of  matter,  which  accounts  for  all  bodily  and  mental  activities.     He  makes 
life  a  property  of  protoplasm  ;  and  protoplasm  a  thing  composed  of  car- 
bon, hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitrogen  ;  as  water  is  a  thing  composed  of 
hydrogen  and  oxygen  ;  and  that  as  "  aquosity"  cannot  be  said  to  exist  to 
produce  the  water  from  said  two  gases,  so  is  "vitality"  not  to  continue 
to  be  spoken  of  as  something  existing  in  the  living  matter,  which  had  no 
representative  in  the  non-living  matter  which  gave  rise  to  it.     But  the 
water  is  a  chemical  compound,  and  protoplasm  consists  of  parts  not 
chemically  united  ;  but  united  by  that  thing  called  life  that  resists  chemi- 
cal action  ;  that  has  properties  of  a  nature  other  than  chemical,  and  is  in 
all  nature  peculiar  and  discriminated.     We  see  that  he  would  thus  sink 
the  life  into  protoplasm,  and  make  it  and  the  intellect  but  a  property  of 
matter.     But  others  should  make  better  observation  and  induction. 

It  may  well  be  asserted  from  all  that  we  can  observe  and  know,  that 
matter  cannot  originate  life  ;  nor  life  matter.  Each  logically  demands  a 
Creator.  Life  cannot  originate  itself ;  but  only  continue  the  previously 
created  life,  by  a  power  conferred  on  life  to  continue  life.  Dead  matter 
may  be  vitalized  and  thus  become  part  of  the  living  body  ;  but  the  life 
must  first  be  to  appropriate  matter  for  its  uses,  to  vitalize  it,  and  to  build 
up  the  living  body  and  to  continue  it  in  life.     In  all  time,  only  life  has 


initiated  the  beings  of  the  successive  generations.  We  have  only  to  con- 
sider all  we  know  to  be  assurecj  of  these  truths.  No  protoplasm  could 
BOW  exist,  unless  life  had  produced  it.  It  never  has  been  chemically  or 
otherwise  than  by  life  produced,  except  as  first  created.  It  is  only  found 
in  the  vital  current  produced  from  dead  food.  The  immediate  cause  of 
it  there  must,  therefore,  be  the  preceding  vital  processes,  endued  with 
power  to  impart  life  to  dead  matter.  In  this  result  Dr.  Carpenter  con- 
aiders  the  liver  and  spleen  perform  important  service. 

The  interest  of  science  and  truth  require  that  we  here  take  a  yet  closer 
view  of  life's  origin  and  perpetuation.  Our  love  of  truth  and  our  rever- 
ence for  God  will  preserve  us  from  every  unhallowed  thought.  No  obser- 
vation or  philosophy  can  account  for  the  first  pair  of  each  living  species, 
otherwise  than  by  the  logic  that  all  tliat  we  behold  must  have  had  a 
transcending  Creator.  Our  race  must  have  had  its  Adam  and  Eve,  or 
first  parents,  ungenerated.  Judging  from  all  that  observation,  and 
science,  and  history  can  teach  us,  every  subsequent  being  has  had  its 
incipient  germ  of  life  from  a  male  parent,  but  only  to  become  another  life 
when  that  germ  has  met  the  prepared  ovule  in  the  mother  that  is  to  afford 
the  offspring  its  nourishment  and  growth.  It  is  only  that  seminal  germ 
that  is  the  incipient  life,  that  first  unites  with  the  ovules  and  afterwards 
appropriates  every  other  particle  of  matter  that  enters  into  the  life  of  the 
new  being.  How  nourished  from*  the  mother  we  have  noticed.  Indue 
time,  but  by  coarser  food,  the  man  and  the  woman  of  each  generation 
are  built  up  to  their  mature  perfection.  But  it  was  the  life  beginning  as 
a  speck,  that  began  and  has  completed  the  structure  by  employing  the 
subservient  molecular  matter.  The  matter  of  itself  could  have  taken  no 
step  in  the  process  ;  it  could  have  sent  not  a  cell  to  form  the  growing, 
living  structure,  if  the  pre-existing  life  had  not  prepared  that  cell  from 
matter  drawn  by  the  life  process  into  the  life-current,  and  afterwards 
placed  it  where  the  lifebuilder  required  its  service.  That  which  was 
dead  in  the  stomach  took  life  in  the  blood  ;  for  the  life-blood  had  power 
to  impart  its  life  to  the  elements  it  needed  for  the  body's  growth. 
It  is  true  now  as  when  Moses  gave  his  commandments,  "  The  blood  is 
the  life  ;  and  thou  mayest  not  eat  the  life  with  the  flesh." 

Dr.  Carpenter,  says,  **  After  the  Chyle  and  Lymph  have  begun  to  flow 
into  the  circulating  current,  the  continued  generation  of  red  corpuscles  is 
due  to  the  progressive  metamorphosis  of  the  corpuscles  of  those  fluids, 
is  an  opinion  that  hus  come  to  be  very  generally  received  by  physiolo- 
gists.'* (lb.  Sec.  168.)  *' Looking,  again,  to  the  undoubted  vitality  of 
the  corpuscles,  and  to  the  strong  ground  for  regarding  fibrin  also  as  an 
instrument  of  vital  force,  we  cannot  but  perceive  that  the  life  of  the 
blood  is  as  legitimate  a  phrase,  and  ought  to  carry  as  much  meaning  in 
it,  as  the  life  of  a  muscle."  (lb.  Sec.  221. )  "Thus  then,  we  seem  justified 
in  the  belief  that  the  Blood,  like  the  solid  tissues,  has  a  formative  power 
of  its  own,  which  it  exerts  in  the  appropriation  of  the  new  material  sup- 
plied to  it  fiom  the  food."  (lb.  222.)     **  There  is  not,  in  fact,  a  more  re- 


9 


markable  indication  of  Hhe  Life  of  the  Blood,'  thau  is  afl^orded  by  its 
extraordinary  power  of  self  recovery,  after  having  undergone  the  excessive 
perversion  which  is  consequent  upon  the  introduction  of  the  more  potent 
zymotic  poisons  ;  and  every  philosophical  physician  is  ready  to  admit, 
that,  is  this  vis  medicatrix  natum,  rather  than  any  remedial  agency 
which  it  is  in  his  power  to  apply,  that  he  must  look  for  the  restoration  of 
his  patient.' '  (lb.  Sec.  232.)  It  is  the  Life  that  is  thus  potent  to  carry  on 
her  work  ;  to  repel  injury,  and  to  cure. 

Let  any  one  look  back  upon  the  origin  of  life  and  its  perpetuation,  and 
he  must  say,  in  the  retrospect,  "between  me  and  the  first  man  of  my 
race  the  thread  of  life  has  never  been  broken.    I  am  more  than  link  of  a 
chain  ;  I  am  part  of  that  first  life,  never  yet  severed.     As  his  was  from 
God,  so  is  mine  that  of  an  ancestry  of  one  continuous  life.''     At  the  in- 
ception of  each  generation  that  has  preceded  each  of  us  through  many 
thousands  of  years,  life  was  but  an  inherited  speck  ;  but  that  speck  was 
part  of  the  next  preceding  life ;  commissioned  to  seize  upon  matter  for 
its  growth,  in  manner  to  fulfil  the  design  of  the  Creator  of  the  first  Ufe, 
and  no  other ;  and  bound  to  arrest  its  own  growth  when  that  design 
should  be  filled  out ;  but  to  continue  the  nurture  of  the  normal  being  until 
its  strength  should  be  spent  by  its  assigned  lapse  of  years,  or  sooner 
termmation  by  disease,  or  casualty.      If  it  has  left  offspring  the  continu- 
ous  Ime  of  life  may  never  be  broken,  as  certainly  it  will  not  have  been  as 
to  any  survivors  of  the  race,  whoever  they  may  be,  for  between  them  and 
the  first  parent,  at  any  future  age,  their  genealogy,  their  life,  will  never 
have  been  severed.     But  the  elements  of  matter  that  have  composed  the 
bodies  of  the  countless  ancestry  will  have  been  dissipated  ten  thousand 
times,  and  gone  the  many  repeated  rounds  of  life  and  death  ;  yet  one  con- 
tinuous line  of  life  has  connected  all  the  generations  by  a  continuity  more 
complete  than  a  chain  of  many  severed  but  interlocked  links ;  b>  an  actual 
physical  and  vital  portion  transmitted  from  every  parent  to  every  child 
being  as  truly  one  continuous  life  as  that  the  planted  willow  slip  con- 
tinues the  life  of  the  parent  tree. 

Let  not,  then,  the  materialist  persuade  us  that  matter  has  done  all  this 
by  matter's  inherent  power.     The  ceaseless  life  has  done  it,  compelling 
inert  matter  to  obey  it ;  and  thus  will  it  use  matter  to  cany  on  all  the 
life  of  earth,  while  the  world  shall  last.    The  dead  matter  so  used  could 
of  Itself  exert  no  such  power  ;  could  not  initiate  life ;  could  exercise  no 
cunning  of  construction  ;  but  only  life  can  continue,  carry  on,  and  per- 
petuate life  ;  so  transmute  dead  matter  to  living,  and  make  it  part  of  that 
life,  whose  stream  in  humanity  commenced  with  the  first  created  man 
and  will  only  end  with  the  last.     All  this  is  sure  induction  from  bound- 
lessly observed  facts  ;  and  reverses  the  theory  of  the  materialist.    And,  all 
that  life  has  done  so  wonderfully  and  so  intelligently,  it  has  done  Lnd 
ever  does  without  a  conscious  wiU  of  its  own.    It  must,  therefore,  do  it 
by  a  will  and  Power  that  is  above  it,  and  that  rules  the  life  ;  the  Power 
that  gives  and  rules  the  instinct  of  the  animal ;  the  Power  that  gives  the 

2 


10 

mind  of  man  and  also  rales  it,  except  as  He  has  conferred  upon  it  free- 
will, within  permitted  limits. 

The  author  of  the  essay  on  the  iPhysical  basis  of  life,  carries  his  induc- 
tion beyond  animate  life.    He  makes  matter  cause  of  life  and  he  places 
vegetable  life  on  the  same  basis  with  the  animal,  and  makes  the  like  pro- 
toplasm the  source  of  both.     Both,  indeed,  have  their  circulations  in 
which  are  contained  material  elements  for  growth,  but  elements  of  a  quite 
different  nature  and  derivation.     The  animal  lives  on  organic  matter ; 
dead  matter  that  has  had  life  in  it ;  the  vegetable  derives  its  supply  fresh 
from  inorganic  matter  in  the  earth  or  air.     This  leaves  us  justly  to  infer 
that  the  elements  of  growth  are  of  diflerent  kinds ;  and  if  so  that  there 
then  can  be  no  protoplasmic  kindred,  and  nothing;  is  gained  by  the  theory. 
The  fluid  in  the  thistle  and  other  plants  have  a  contractility  that  gives 
movement  to  the  circulation  and  diffuses  the  molecules  or  protoplasm. 
That  shews  a  different  impelling  force  from  that  of  the  heait  of  the 
animal ;  and  rather  indicates  a  want  of  identity  of  protoplasmic  material, 
while  the  wants  of  the  two  growths  demand  different  material.    The 
animal's  circulation  constantly  repeats  its  rounds,  while  the  plant's  growth 
depends  upon  a  single  fluid  transmission  from  root  to  leaf,  and  from  leaf 
to  root,  as  the  seasons  change.    Huxley  would  confound  the  two  great 
kingdoms  of  nature,  because  there  is  a  veij  limited  agreement  in  the  ap- 
pearances and  behavior  of  the  fluid  supply  of  both.     Contrasting  plants 
with  the  lowest  animals,  he  says,  *'it  may  well  ho  asked,  how  is  one  mass 
of  non-nucleated  protoplasm  to  be  distinguished  from  another?    Why 
caU  one  *  plant,'  and  the  other  '  animal '  ?"     The  answer  naturally  would 
be  because  they  are  of  different  natures,  shewing  that  their  protoplasm 
should  be  different  in  elements,  and  because  the  animal  has  sensation,  the 
plant  none  ;-  and  usually  other  obvious  distinctions     To  call  the  supply 
of  vitalized  food  by  the  same  name,  without  proof  that  its  elements  are 
the  same,  seems  to  be  a  summary  way  of  breaking  down  distinctions  be- 
tween the  different  kingdoms  of  beings  and  things  of  life. 

Continuing  our  attention  to  vegetable  life  let  us  judge  the  tree  by  the 
fruit.  Can  any  body  imagine  the  resin  of  the  evergreen  to  be  identical 
with  the  sap  of  deciduous  tree  s?  The  inflammable  turpentine  to  be  the  same 
as  the  watery  sap  that  would  extinguish  fire?  Can  the  oak  and  hemlock 
whose  bark  contains  tannin  have  the  same  base  as  the  sap  of  the  sugar 
maple  and  sugar  cane?  Can  the  Tea  and  Coffee  trees  producing  theine 
come  fiom  the  same  elements  as  the  Palm  and  Olive  trees?  The  gums  of 
commeice,  the  varnishes,  the  resins  ;  the  spices,  cloves,  nutmegs ;  the 
vegetable  coloring  matteis ;  tobacco,  opium,  hashhish  ;  and  cinchonia  and 
all  vegetable  drags  ;  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  all  these,  and  plants 
that  produce  deadly  poisons,  had  the  same  base  with  our  farinaceous  food, 
and  edible  fraits.  Theory  that  attempts  to  destroy  these  distinctions  by 
a  few  observations  so  narrowly  based  as  that  in  question,  must  meet  with 
deserved  incredulity,  by  mankind.  The  canon  of  legitimate  induction  is 
violated.    A  similitude  of  molecules  presented  to  the  vision  by  the  micro- 


lii, 


11 


scope,  that  tells  nothing  of  their  inherent  properties  or  proportions,  can- 
not determine  the  base  of  plants  to  be  the  same,  when  their  quality  as 
medicines,  coloring  material,  or  nourishing  food,  or  poisons,  are  infinitely 
varied  and  the  opposite  of  each  other. 

This  physical  basis  of  life  that  is  thus  extended  so  broadly,  Huxley,  in 
a  measure,  defines  by  saying,  "that  as  all  protoplasm  is  proteinaceous, 
or,  as  the  white,  or  albumen  of  an  egg  is  one  of  the  commonest  examples 
of  a  nearly  pure  proteine  matter,  we  may  say  that  all  living  matter  is 
more  or  less  albuminoid."  Well,  that  may  be,  if  sufficient  latitude  be 
allowed  to  the  words  *'more  or  less,"  and  yet  all  be  as  different  as  the 
things  above  enumerated,  with  many  other  things  of  contrary  elements 
constituting  their  "living  matter,"  for  all  that  is  not  albumen  must  then 
be  something  else,  and  be  part  of  the  living  matter  that  came  with  the 
albumen,  or  protoplasm,  into  the  composition  of  the  living  being  or  thing. 
And  this  lets  the  theory  fall  to  the  ground.  A  partial  similitude  will  not 
necessarily  constitute  identity.  The  theory  demands  too  much  when  it 
requires  identity  of  elements  of  growth  in  plants  and  animals  of  whatso- 
ever kind. 

The  plant,  uosentient,  without  mind  or  will  of  its  own,  is  said,  by 
naturalists,  to  affect  its  habitat,  that  is  to  choose  where  it  likes  to  grow. 
This  but  means  that  it  flourishes  where  circumstances  most  favor  its 
growth,  and  does  not  elsewhere.  In  its  life  inhere  wonderful  mysteries 
that  we  can  only  refer  to  something  above  it,  as  we  have  for  the  life  and 
instinct  of  animate  beings.  Its  seeds  are  boundlessly  strewn,  but  which 
shall  grow  and  flourish  will  depend  upon  their  relative  power  and  mastery 
over  competing  plants.  This  contest  and  its  results  we  readily  understand. 
But  how  the  fibres  of  the  roots  have  their  gift  to  select  from  the  soil  only 
those  particles  of  nourishment  which  suits  the  plant's  growth  ;  how  the 
plant  can  convert  silt  into  flowers  ;  how  it  can  send  the  vital  current  against 
the  law  of  gravitation,  to  the  topmost  branches  of  the  oak  and  pine,  sur- 
passes our  comprehension.  We  say,  in  part  explanation  of  the  latter, 
that  the  resin  and  sap  pass  upwards  by  capillary  attraction,  as  we  see 
water  rise  a  limited  distance  in  very  small  tubes,  or  through  a  sponge,  or 
among  the  hairs  of  our  shaving  brush.  This,  in  part,  may  suffice,  but 
there  must  be  help  from  vital  action,  as  certainly  there  seems  to  be  where 
life  is  employed  in  the  fresh  growth  of  annual  plants,  and  the  new 
branches  of  trees.  The  vital  force  must  do  the  work,  as  when  that  is 
qiiiescent  nothing  is  done.  As  in  all  animate  nature  we  can  only  continue 
to  look  upon  all  vegetable  life  as  a  continuing,  insoluble  mysteiy;  but  of  the 
highest  beneficence.  Trees  and  plants,  ever  ti-ue  to  the  life  and  duty  assigned 
them,  will  furnish  to  man,  beast,  fish,  reptile,  bird  and  insect,  the  food 
they  require  ;  and  to  man  the  medicines,  gums,  dye-stuft*s,  and  spices  he 
wants ;  and  also  the  blossoms,  flowers,  and  scenery  he  loves  and  enjoys 
with  an  ever  refining  enjoyment.  In  truth,  directly  or  indirectly,  all  the 
animate  life  on  land,  or  in  air  or  sea,  is  supported  by  the  seemingly  self- 
sustaining  life  of  the  vegetable  kingdom.  The  latter  is  created  that  the 
former  may  live  ;  and  all  that  human  souls  may  crown  the  creation.     Yet 


JLi  m9 


all  vegetable  life,  as  all  animal,  now  existing,  judging  by  all  we  see  or 
know,  are  the  continuous  threads  of  the  first  created  life  of  their  respec- 
tive species^  kept  forever  unbroken  and  unentangled. 

And  as  every  species  in  vegetation  selects  and  assimilates  different 
elements  from  the  soil  or  air,  and  for  diflferent  parts  of  itself,  as  wood, 
bark,  leaf  and  flower,  so  does  every  different  species  of  animal  select 
those  essential  to  its  own  well  being ;  and  to  complete  the  creature  that 
the  life  is  busy  in  constructing,  and  it  does  construct,  but  that  the  parent 
was.  These  end*  demand  differing  elements ;  and  however  seemingly 
alike  their  protoplasm  and  blood,  those  and  whatever  else  is  tributary  to  the 
varied  growth  and  dififering  developments,  must  be  equally  different.  It 
is  vain  for  science  to  say  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind  that  the  cells 
that  compose  the  bone  and  cartilages,  tendon  and  muscle,  the  tissue,  skin, 
hair,  all  opaque,  and  transparent  eye,  are  identical  in  material,  more 
than  in  shape  or  function,  or  fruit.  The  sight,  the  tests  of  chemistry, 
Commercial  scrutiny  and  scientific  classification,  alike  conti-adict  the 
theory,  and  tell  us  it  cannot  be  true  that  the  protoplasm  or  blood  of 
animal  and  vegetable,  and  every  kind  of  each,  caa  be  the  same.  The 
young  of  the  mammalia  drink  milk  drawn  from  the  mother ;  and  the  milk 
of  the  different  kinds  may  look  much  alike,  yet  not  be  identical,  and  not 
alike  be  suitable  to  nourish  the  young  of  all.  We  may  take  leave  to  re- 
gard it  as  a  myth  that  Romulus  was  suckled  by  a  wolf;  but  will  implicitly 
believe  that  neither  "  do  men  gather  grapes  of  thorns,  or  figs  of  thistles." 

It  is  of  necessity  that  all  animals  and  vegetables  that  have  a  vital  circu- 
lation must  take  their  food  into  their  circulations  in  fluid  form,  that  it 
may  thereby  traverse  the  body,  and  in  sufficient  minuteness  supply  its 
wants  of  growth  and  repair  where  needed.  The  stomach  of  the  animal 
elaborates  the  solid  into  fluid  ;  the  roots  of  the  vegetable  take  up  the 
material  it  wants,  assisted  by  the  rains  and  water  that  give  the  required 
transporting  fluidity.  But  that  each  process  sends  into  the  circulation 
the  same  eletnents  for  animal  and  tree,  there  is  not  furnished  the  begin, 
ninqr  of  any  proof,  while  the  different  natures  of  the  growths  indicate  very 
surely  that  their  wants  are  not  the  same,  that  their  supplies  are  different, 
as  their  products  are  infinitely  diverse.  It  must,  therefore,  be  mislead- 
ing to  maintain  the  theory  **  that  all  living  powers  are  cognate,  and  that 
allliving  forms  are  fundamentally  of  one  character."  There  is  yet  a 
vegetable  kingdom  and  an  animal  kingdom,  and  those  infinitely  diversi- 
fied.    "  There  U  one  flesh  of  man,  and  another  of  beasts." 

Seems  it  tedious  and  unnecessary  thus  to  have  traveled  over  the  grounds 
of  this  theory  in  so  much  detail?  The  conclusion  to  which  it  is  carried 
shews  how  important  it  is  to  have  carefully  considered  every  foundation 
stone  of  the  superstructure.  It  concerns  man  the  most  deeply  of  all  ques- 
tions to  know  what  he  is  and  what  he  is  to  be.  That  such  question  is 
invi lived  is  shown  by  the  conclusion  at  which  the  theorist  has  arrived.  In 
his  own  estimation  he  has  proved  the  protoplasm  of  the  vegetable  and 
animal,  animal  including  man,  to  be  the  same  :    Thus  Professor  Huxley 


13 


says  :  "  As  I  have  endeavored  to  prove  to  you,  their  protoplasm  is  essen- 
tially identical  with,  and  most  rapidly  converted  iijto,  that;  of  any  animal, 
I  can  discover  no  logical  halting  place  between  the  admission  that  such 
is  the  case,  and  the  further  concession  that  all  mtal  action  may,  with 
equal  propriety,  be  said  to  be  the  result  of  the  molecular  forces  of  the 
protoplasm  which  displays  it :  And  if  so,  it  must  be  true,  in  the  same 
sense,  and  to  the  same  extent,  that  the  thoughts  to  which  I  am  now  giving 
utterance,  and  your  thoughts  regarding  thein  are  the  expression  of  molecular 
changes  in  that  matter  of  life  which  is  the  source  of  our  other  vital  phenom- 
ena.^^ Is  there  anything  of  uncertain  sound  in  this?  He  expects  from  it 
the  outcry  of  "gross  and  brutal  materialism  ;"  and  then  confesses  that 
**  most  undoubtedly  the  terms  of  the  proposition  are  distinctly  materialistic,'** 
What  more  he  next  says  I  will  show  hereafter. 

Thus  the  logical  climax  of  the  theory ;  the  capstone  of  the  edifice,  ap- 
pears to  be  that  the  thoughts  and  mind  of  man,  being  derived  from  the 
same  protoplasmic  source  as  the  lower  animals  and  the  plant,  and  the 
physical  organization  being  thence  built  up,  it  is  consequently  to  follow, 
that  when  the  life  of  this  body  shall  be  dead,  there  will  be  no  mind,  no 
soul,  to  survive;  that  it  can  only  with  truth  then  be  said,  *'the  bubble  of 
life  has  burst!"  Such  would  be  the  natural  conclusion  of  mankind  from 
such  premises.  And  if  such  be  the  import  of  human  life,  what  then  is  the 
worth  of  creation  !  Are  the  dignity  of  man,  and  the  glory  of  the  universe, 
and  the  exalting  faith  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  to  be  thus  cast  down, 
and  shorn  of  their  grandeur  and  of  their  logical  significance,  because  the 
works  of  the  Almighty  shew  some  faint  resemblances  in  the  early  pro- 
cesses of  life  ?  That  because  He  makes  matter  subservient  to  life,  and  life 
to  the  mind  or  soul,  that,  tnerefcre,  all  must  be  matter  and  all  but  matter? 
If  such  be  the  logic  of  creation,  as  only  now  found  out  by  very  limited 
applications  of  the  microscope,  it  would  seem  to  be  wise  in  us  to  wait  a 
thousand-fold  further  applications  of  that  instrument  to  the  invisible 
elements  of  life  ;  and  not  the  while  refuse  to  use  our  eyes  and  the  telescope 
as  to  what  they  can  see ,  and  also  to  use  our  understanding  and  its  logic 
as  to  what  they  can  clearly  know,  before  we  surrender  our  faith  in  all 
that  humanity,  in  its  best  conditions,  through  the  centuries  of  time,  has 
taken  to  be  the  import  of  our  being  and  the  meaning  of  the  Universe. 

Happily,  however,  for  our  relief,  so  far  as  his  authority  will  avail.  Dr. 
Huxley  makes  the  admission  that,  while  he  is  logically  carried  to  a  ma- 
terialistic conclusion  by  his  philosophy,  he  is,  in  truth,  no  materialist,  and 
that  materialization  would  "paralyze  the  energies  and  destroy  the  beauty 
of  life."  He  has  perceived  within  himself  a  nobler  sense  of  the  import  of 
his  being,  that  arrests  his  individual  conclusion,  and  deflects  his  logic,  so 
confidently  asserted,  into  an  opposite  direction.  That  is  well,  and  some 
comfort  ;  but  may  we  take  his  mere  opinion  as  adequate  counterpoise  to 
a  theory  he  has  advocated  with  elaborate  detail  and  apparent  earnestness 
of  conviction  ?  Those  who  love  skepticism  will  continue  to  abide  by  his 
theory,  which  he  has  not  himself  controverted- 


In  one  half  para^^pb  he  confesses  to  a  contradiction ;  to  two  opposite 
conclusions ;  that  the  theory  he  has  announced  as  logically  true,  ho,  him- 
self, does  not  believe  1  Thus  he  says:  **ADd,  most  undoubtedly,  the 
terms  of  the  propositions  are  distinctly  materialistic.  Nevertheless,  two 
things  are  certain  :  the  one,  that  I  hold  the  statements  to  be  substantially 
true  ;  the  other,  that  I,  individually,  am  no  materialist,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, believe  materialism  to  involve  grave  philosophical  error."  Dr. 
Huxley  has  not  said  this  to  accommodate  himself  to  the  orthodox 
opinion  of  men.  He  who  takes  occasion  frequently  to  encounter  and 
brave  that  opinion  cannot  thus  have  insincerely  conformed  to  it.  He  is 
obviously  too  candid  and  too  brave  for  that.  He  seems  in  all  his  conduct 
to  follow  what  he  takes  to  be  the  truth  fearless  of  consequences.  But 
what  then,  must  be  our  judgment  of  him?  Can  it  be  other  than  this, 
that  he  is  possessed  of  a  truer  logic,  based  upon  vastly  more  facts  than 
the  few  embraced  in  his  protoplastic  theory ;  and  that  his  individual  be- 
lief, for  which  he  has  not  given  us  the  grounds,  contains  the  actual  truth; 
and  that,  consequently,  we  have  Huxley's  authority  to  condemn  em- 
phatically Huxley's  theory,  built  upon  "  the  physical  basis  of  life.*'  But 
who  will  answer  for  his  insincerity  to  the  truth  of  science  ?  For  the  con- 
sequences of  the  infidelity  he  has  preached  in  his  sermon?  He  proposes 
to  conduct  his  hearers  out  of  the  slough,  into  which  he  confesses  he  had 
plunged  them,  and  meant  to  plunge  them  ;  but  we  read  on  to  the  end  of 
the  discourse  in  the  vain  expectation  of  finding  the  stepping  stones  that 
would  conduct  us  out  of  the  slough  to  the  firm  land.  Does  he  not  in  this 
trifle  with  his  own  and  the  understandings  of  men?  His  philosophical 
speculation  is  one  thing  ;  his  individual  opinion  is  another.  He  describes 
no  mitigated  materialism  that  represents  his  own  conviction.  That  which 
he  has  explained  makes  his  uttered  thoughts  but  matter ;  for  these,  he 
says,  "are  the  molecular  changes  of  that  matter  of  life  which  is  the 
source  of  our  other  vital  phenomena."  And  this  is  his  hopeful  and  con- 
fident assertion :  '*  And  as  surely  as  every  future  grows  out  of  past  and 
and  present,  so  will  the  physiology  of  the  future  extend  the  realm  of 
matter  and  law,  until  it  is  co-extensive  with  knowledge,  with  feeling,  and 
with  action."  Thus  the  science  of  the  physical  basis  of  life  is  to  absorb 
the  mental  and  emotional,  and  make  all  one,  all  physical ;  all  to  have  but 
a  physical  basis  a  ad  a  physical  consummation.  And  yet,  again,  he  con- 
fesses to  two  hopeful  beliefs,  but  flagrantly  at  variance  with  his  preten- 
sion for  physiology :  **  The  first,  thai  the  order  of  nature  is  ascertainable 
by  our  faculties  to  an  extent  which  is  practically  unlimited ;  the  second, 
that  our  volition  counts  for  something  as  a  condition  of  the  course  of 
events."  Yet  neither  of  these  could,  logically,  be  a  true  belief,  if  man  be 
but  the  product  of  matter  and  law,  and  these  be  taken  as  sole  sources  of 
his  knowledge,  feeling,  and  action  ;  for  all  would  yet  be  fatalism,  as  well 
as  paralyzing  materialism.  Indeed,  there  could  be  no  thought  if  all  were 
matter.  Mere  changes  of  molecular  matter  could  not  be  means  to  ex- 
pand our  knowledge,  or  rule  the  course  of  human  events.  What  would 
it  be  to  the  world  and  its  events,  that  the  material  of  my  brain  had  un- 


15 


dergone  molecular  change  ?  Thoughts  are  not  material  growths ;  are  not 
buds  or  sprouts ;  are  not  protuberances  or  indentations,  or  engraved 
lines  ;  or  secretions  or  excretions  of  matter,  or  the  shifting  of  any  mole- 
cular living  particles,  by  any  testimony  ever  presented  to  the  human 
mind.  Men  cannot  conceive  that  matter  can  be  thought,  or  thought 
matter  ;  and  all  its  phenomena  declare  it  unlike  all  else  in  created  nature, 
and  without  element  of  matter.  The  mind  of  man  has,  indeed,  a  like- 
ness unto  God. 

Dr.  Huxley  says,  "the  fundamental  doctrines  of  materialism,  like 
those  of  spiritualism,  and  most  other  *  isms,'  lie  outside  the  limits  of 
philosophical  inquiry."  Says,  "  It  is  also  in  strictness  true,  that  we  know 
nothing  about  the  composition  of  any  body  whatever  as  it  is."  But  is 
not  all  knowledge  within  the  limits  of  philosophical  inquiry  ?  And, 
though  we  cannot  know  how  matter,  or  life,  or  mind  can  be,  or  what  in 
essence  they  are,  yet  we  certainly  can  and  do  know  much  of  the  prop- 
erties and  actions  of  each  and  all  of  them,  and  of  their  differences  from 
each  other.  We  must  not  become  so  far  positivists  as  to  refuse  to  know 
all  that  is  knowable;  and  especially  may  we  not  ignore  the  human  mind. 
It  is  our  duty  to  search  after  all  attainable  truths,  and  when  we  have 
come  to  the  limit  of  our  faculties,  there  reverently  to  pause  in  the  pres- 
ence of  an  infinity  of  knowledge  known  only  to  God.  To  seek  knowledge 
only  of  things  physical,  and  things  of  life,  and  there  to  set  the  limit  of 
inquiry,  seems  but  the  prudery  of  scientific  caution,  that  can  win  no 
credit  for  wisdom,  nor  increase  our  trust  in  the  authoriry  of  the  teacher. 

In  this  discourse  we  have  assumed  that  in  its  origin  life  had  a  Creator, 
upon  the  logic  that  such  effect  must  have  an  adequate  and  a  far-trans- 
cending cause.  As  matter  and  life  logically  demanded  a  Creator  of  each, 
and  neither  produced  the  other,  so  does  the  mind  or  soul,  by  even  higher 
claim,  logically  demand  a  Heavenly  Father.  Its  nature  is  too  dis- 
tinguishable and  transcending  to  be  confounded  with  matter  or  life.  Life 
dominates  matter,  mind  dominates  them  both,  and  God  them  all.  The 
soul  asserts  a  higher  than  a  generated  parentage,  and  a  large  immunity 
from  the  mutations  of  matter.  Matter  ever  slides  from  under  mind,  but 
its  integrity  is  untouched.  The  matter  that  has  sustained  the  life  of  one 
as  old  as  the  writer,  has  wholly  passed  away  from  his  body  more  than 
ten  times  ;  and  the  more  rapidly  changing  parts  have  been  eliminated  with 
vastly  greater  frequency.  Yet  the  mind  in  this  body  has  a  memory  of 
conscious  identity  from  the  year  next  before  the  first  of  the  current  cen- 
tury. Such  imperishable  mind  can  have  no  element  of  ever-shifting  mat- 
ter in  it,  and  must  be  a  being  of  difi'erent  origin  and  nature,  both  from 
the  material  of  this  body  and  the  life  of  this  body.  That  material  is 
ever  changing,  and  is  often  renewed,  until  the  body's  death  ;  and  when 
the  life  that  maintained  the  organization  shall  have  succumbed,  and  have 
ceased  to  exist,  except  as  it  has  been  continued  in  a  living  progeny,  we 
justly  infer  that  the  mind,  or  soul,  will  cutlive  the  organization  and  the 
life,  and  will  return  to  its  its  Giver,  to  share  His  pleasure,  or  meet  His 


condemnatioD,  as  deserving.  This  is  inferred  from  what  we  know  of  the 
nature  of  mind,  and  the  induction  that  creation  must  have  an  adequate 
significance.  The  great  truths  of  Scripture  are  inductively  reattested  by 
the  truths  of  philosophy. 

Thus,  then,  stands  the  phenomenon  of  our  being.  The  matter  that  en- 
ters the  body  may  be  in  itself,  for  all  we  know,  imperishable,  but  is  cer- 
tainly transient  in  each  living  body,  remains  there  until  effete,  and  is 
then  dismissed  by  the  vital  process,  or  at  death  passes  into  vapor  and 
ashes,  and  enters  the  further  rounds  of  chemical  change  and  vegetable 
and  animal  growths.  The  organized  being  of  one  generation  of  the  life 
of  an  unbroken  continuity  from  the  first  parents  has  come  to  an  end, 
except  as  continued  by  offspring ;  but  the  individual,  ungenerated,  im- 
material mind  tliat  was  neither  the  matter  nor  life  of  the  body  lives  on 
forever. 

We  have  seen  the  life  to  assert  a  dominating  power  over  all  the  ma- 
terial that  has  built  up  the  organized  body.  This  life  process  is  essentially 
one  independent  of  the  mental  will.  During  gestation  this  is  plainly  so  ; 
and  is  so  through  life,  except  as  the  mind  has  power  to  refuse  to  conform 
to  the  laws  of  health,  and  may  mar  life's  healthful  functions  and  dura- 
tion, even  to  the  perpetration  of  suicide.  The  circulation,  digestion, 
assimilation,  and  eliminations  go  on  in  health  almost  without  our  con- 
sciousness ;  but  we  are  compelled  at  intervals,  by  hunger  and  thirst,  to 
keep  up  the  needed  supply  of  food  and  drink.  The  brain  and  nervous 
system  are  also  thus  nourished,  as  the  rest  of  the  body,  though  it  is  the 
system  especially  subjected  to  the  instant  dominion  of  the  mind  or  will. 
The  material  brain  and  nerves  are  not  the  mind,  nor  do  they  produce  it, 
but  ara  servants  of  the  mind.  Mind  is  other  than  the  brain  and  nerves, 
and  is  other  than  the  life ;  and  it  alone  can  rule,  and  must  give  account 
of  itself,  the  body,  and  the  life.  The  vegetable  carries  on  all  its  given 
life- processes,  without  sensation  and  without  mind.  The  animal  below 
man  does  the  same,  except  as  it  has  a  limited  mental  development  that 
we  call  instinct,  has  also,  limitedly,  brain,  and  nerves,  and  senses;  all  of 
wonderful  fitness  for  its  preservation,  which  we  may  not  now  pause  to 
consider.  The  life  of  plant  or  animal  will  grow  to  its  assigned  limit,  will 
cure  its  own  wounds,  and  reproduce  its  kind,  but  is  other  than  the  in- 
stinct of  the  animal,  yet  more  remote  from  the  mind  of  man.  It  alone, 
of  all  beings,  has  moral  responsibility. 

Among  the  hundred,  or  thousand,  wonders  of  the  life,  whose  causal 
explanation  can  be  in  Deity  alone,  and  over  which  mind  had  no  formative 
power,  is  the  fact  that  every  kind  of  nerve  has  been  fitted  for  its  special 
duty,  and  can  perform  no  other.  There  is,  in  this,  admirable  design  to 
prevent  confusion.  The  nerve  of  sense  can  give  sensation  to,  but  can 
impart  no  mandate  from  the  mind.  The  nerve  that  executes  command 
will  give  back  no  sensation.  One  of  each  is  attached  to  each  serving 
muscle,  but  neither  can  do  the  appointed  work  of  the  other.  The  nerves 
of  sight,  hearing,  taste,  and  smell  can  neither  of  them  perform  the  funo- 


17 


tiou  of  any  other.  The  brain,  the  commonly  supposed  seat  of  all  feeliug, 
has  in  itself  no  feeling.  Sir  Charles  Bell  hays,  "The  brain  is  as  insensi- 
ble as  the  leather  of  our  shoe ;  that  the  brain  may  be  touched,  or  a  por- 
tion of  it  cut  off,  without  interrupting  the  patient  in  the  sentence  he  is 
uttering."  The  brain  and  the  sensitively  perceiving  mind  must,  therefore, 
be  different.  The  one  is  cut  away;  the  other  suffers  thereby  no  interrup- 
tion of  thought  or  its  expression.  One  feels;  the  others  does  not.  One 
commands;  the  other  obeys.  The  muscle  is  moved  by  the  will  and  exerts 
great  power,  but  through  a  brain  and  a  nerve  without  muscle,  or  physi- 
cal power,  so  far  as  is  seen.  Apparently  an  immaterial  mind  says  to 
every  muscle  do  this,  and  it  doeth  it,  but  by  the  word  of  Command. 
Truly,  the  body,  life  and  mind,  each,  is  very  wonderful,  and  most  won- 
derful is  their  combination  ;  a  combination  of  dissimilar  things,  made  to 
act  in  antagonism,  and  yet  bound  to  act  in  harmony,  for  the  welfare  of 
all.  Awake,  the  mind  is  to  regulate  all  for  the  common  good,  yet  may 
not,  without  injury,  much  interfere  with  the  life-process  of  the  bodily 
organization.  Asleep,  the  physical  reacts,  taking  a  limited  advantage  of 
the  un watchful  mind  that  has  let  drop  the  rein  of  discipline.  The  raiud 
in  the  semi-consciousness  of  dreams  ranges  through  bright  scenes  and 
beautiful  images,  if  all  be  well  with  mind  and  body  ;  but  if  either  l)e  un- 
happy or  disordered,  a  dark  change  comes  over  the  happy  dream,  and 
then  threatened  dangers  and  startling  incidents  awake  the  mind  to  resume 
irs  discipline,  happy  then  to  find  its  troublous  adventures  '*but  a  dream."' 
Yet  in  the  sleeping  and  waking  experience  the  mind  and  body  have 
acted  and  leacted,  both  as  united,  and  often  as  opposing  powers. 

The  materialist  sometimes  ventures  even  to  liken  life  to  a  process  of 
crystallization  or  chemistry,  or  mechanism,  and  mind  as  well.  Crystal- 
lization follows  one  law,  and,  the  world  over,  does  one  thing,  and  forms  its 
crystals  and  gems  of  each  kind  on  the  same  angle  ;  her  ultimate  particles 
of  the  same  kind  being  of  the  same  shape,  and  obeying  one  law  of  attrac- 
tion. The  chemical  affinities  act  under  laws  as  certain,  and  under  the 
same  circumstances  act  always  in  the  same  way.  Living  things  are  more 
complicate  ;  and  the  process  of  growth  is  carried  on  by  an  apparent  choice 
as  to  the  selection  of  material  and  in  the  deposit  of  different  particles  for 
the  growth  of  the  several  parts  differently  from  crystallization  and  chem- 
istry. Life  is  not  molecular,  or  magnetic,  or  chemical  attraction  ;  but  is 
a  vital  process  that  employs  various  materials  ;  utilizes  them,  and  dis- 
poses of  them  differently  to  perfect  the  common  economy.  It  employs,  it 
iS  tiiie,  chemical  processes  in  breathing,  etc. ;  and  in  the  heart,  eye  and  ear, 
and  in  the  action  of  the  muscles,  mechanical  structures  and  powers  ;  but 
all  is  moved  by  and  dependent  upon  the  life  that  has  made  from  matter 
living  molecules,  and  with  them  constructed  the  creature.  But  all  this, 
though  subservient  to,  gives  no  explanation  of  the  mind  ;  shows  no  kin- 
dred to  it ;  gives  no  information  why  we  have  consciousness,  how  we  can 
feel  and  think.  No  proof  is  offered,  nor  can  it  is  believed,  be  adduced, 
to  shew  that  the  mental  action  consists  in  but  physical  changes.     The 


18 

brain,  as  the  arm,  may  shew  weariness  when  overtasked  by  the  mind  ; 
may  suffer  waste  of  material,  of  phosphorus  if  you  please,  but  that  will 
not  prove  mind  to  be  brain,  or  brain  mind. 

The  all  transcending  importance  of  this  subject  demands  our  yet  further 
patient  consideration.  On  the  discrimination  of  the  mind  of  man  from  the 
body  and  from  the  life,  depends  our  truthful  appi-ehension  of  the  great 
problem  of  what  we  are,  and  what  we  are  intended  to  be ;  the  most  im- 
portant consideration  that  can  occupy  the  human  mind.  Can  we,  as 
rational  beings,  live  over  three  score  years  and  ten,  or  more,  and  not 
devote  much  of  our  time  to  reflect  upon  this  subject,  the  highest  of  philoso- 
phical studies?  This  is  not  an  **  ism  "  lying  outside  philosophical  inquiry. 
No  religion  can  begin  her  task,  no  philosophy  can  consummate  her  study, 
that  has  not  peristently  dwelt  upon  it  and  made  it  the  theme  of  habitual 
thought.  It  is  the  necessary  climax  of  all  the  study  that  can  give  us  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  the  universe.  In  this  age  of  materialistic  skepti- 
cism, that  respects  no  time-honored  opinions,  or  sacred  traditions,  we  must 
begin  where  the  physicists  begin,  but  may  not  stop  where  they  are  wont  to 
Btop  ;  may  not  refuse  to  know  the  ultimate  significance  of  all  created  things 
and  beings,  body  and  soul,  as  they  are  constantly  presented  before  our  senses, 
and  demand  interpretation  from  our  reasoning  intellect.  We  may  not  fail 
to  examine  and  consider  all  the  true  facts  that  tlie  naturalist  and  physicist 
make  the  basis  of  their  theories,  nor  all  other  facts  that  must  be  taken 
into  view,  for  a  true  solution  of  the  problem.  No  a  priori  assumptions 
may  be  admitted  as  basis  of  induction  ;  and  it  must  not  be  allowed  the 
skeptic  to  say,  as  he  is  sure  to  do,  that  he  only  builds  truly  upon  certain 
facts ;  that  his  faith  alone  stands  in  inductive  truth  ;  that  religious  faith 
will  not  bear  the  test  of  induction  from  ascertained  facts.  And  we  must 
not  permit  him  to  make  his  inductionH  fi-om  less  than  half  the  facts  that 
define  our  being,  and  these  the  less  important. 

The  mind's  thoughts  are  not  propagated  as  things  of  physical  growth. 
We  but  borrow  in  relation  to  the  mind,  the  language  of  the  garden  and 
use  it  figuratively,  when  we  speak  of  sowing  mental  seeds,  or  propagating 
ideas.  Tlie  thoughts  I  am  speaking  I  do  not  lose  ;  and  your  gain,  if  any, 
is  not  a  material  acquisition,  nor,  so  far  as  you  or  I  can  ever  know, 
has  the  effect  been  produced  by  molecular  changes  in  our  brains ;  and 
if  such  changes  do  take  place  they  are  a  life  process  of  the  brain,  and 
cannot,  conceivably  to  us,  be  the  thoughts  that  enter  int3  and  exercise 
your  minds ;  thoughts  that  as  believed  worthy,  or  as  your  minds  may 
make  them  worthy,  may  become  permanently  your  thoughts,  after  the 
molecular  particles  moved,  if  any  such,  will  have  long  passed  away.  The 
mind  may,  indeed,  for  aught  we  know,  and  we  may  so  conjecture  it  prob- 
able, put  the  brain  in  motion,  as  we  know  it  will  thrill  the  nerves,  and 
can  hurry  the  blood  ;  as  the  wind  can  heave  the  water  into  waves,  but  the 
cause  and  the  effect  are  different,  and  continue  ever  after  as  distinct  as 

before. 
Physiology  teaches  us  that  the  mind  is  seated  in  the  brain  ;  for  with  the 


19 

brain  is  connected  every  nerve  that  gives  to  the  mind  the  sensations  re- 
ceived by  it ;  and  with  the  brain  is  connected  every  nerve  that  executes 
the  will  of  the  min^  upon  every  muscle  of  the  body  movable  by  the  will. 
A  ligature  round  the  nerves  of  sensation  will  prevent  the  mind  receiving 
sensations  by  them  from  a  point  beyond  the  ligature  ;  a  ligature  round  the 
nerves  that  obey  the  will,  will  paralyze  its  power  to  command  the  muscle 
to  which  the  nerve  is  attached.  The  perception  and  command  are  inter- 
cepted at  the  ligature  ;  and  beyond  mental  power  has  ceased.  The 
mind  that  is  the  light  of  our  being,  sits  enthroned  in  a  chamber  of  life-long 
darkness,  cushioned  upon  medullary  matter ;  moved  by  no  muscle,  yet 
moving  every  motor  muscle  as  bid  to  obey  its  will.  The  eyes  are  called 
its  windows ;  but  that  is  to  speak  figuratively,  for  no  ray  of  light  ever 
enters  there  ;  the  senses  are  called  its  portals,  through  which  we  learn  all 
we  know  of  things  without  us,  but  no  sense  ever  lets  into  the  mind  one 
particle  of  matter. 

We  have  seen  that  the  life  of  the  body  is  fed  by  material  food  taken 
into  the  stomach.  The  mind  is  nob  so  fed,  nor  fed  by  any  material  food. 
The  mind,  or  a  mental  capacity,  exists  in  the  child  at  birth,  underived  from 
sensations,  for  it  must  pre-exist  to  receive  the  first  as  all  after  sensations. 
Though  we  may  not  know  how  it  can  exist  ;  of  its  nature  and  operations 
we  can  observe  and  know  as  much  as  of  matter  and  life  ;  and  we  have  no 
more  right  to  refuse  to  know  all  that  we  can  understand  of  it  than  of 
them.  It  is  the  nobler  part  of  our  being,  and  that  which  is  most  charac- 
teristic and  most  prophetic  of  the  purpose  of  existence. 

The  immaterial  mind  is  fed  but  with  immaterial  food.  It  draws  this 
from  sensations  without  and  within  ;  and  thus  learns  the  nature  and 
qualities  of  all  perceived  things.  It  digests  that  it  receives  ;  forms  con- 
ceptions or  ideas  by  its  inherent  power ;  has  capacity  of  comparing,  think- 
ing and  judging,  and  thus  is  also  self- fed  from  within  by  immaterial 
thoughts  as  no  life  is  fed.  Thus  we  may  observe  ^.he  mind  to  be  developed; 
the  mind  that  can  frame  the  constitutions  and  laws  that  preserve  human 
society,  and  that  can  administer  them  ;  that  can  wield  the  physical  arms 
and  resources  of  the  nation  ;  and  can  develop  the  truths  of  philosophy 
and  religion.  All  this  is  done  by  thought,  only  by  thought  ;  by  thought, 
indeed,  sometimes  inspired  ;  and  the  quieter  the  body  and  the  brain,  the 
more  surely  truthful  is  the  mental  judgment  and  the  might  of  its  power. 

Now  let  us  consider  some  of  the  sensations  that  the  mind  notices  as 
perceptions  and  conceptions,  and  stores  as  ideas,  to  be  used  in  thought 
and  judgment  and  see  if  they  own  a  material  source.  The  eye  opens  upon 
all  visible  things,  and  by  a  lens  the  picture  of  them  is  represented  on  the 
retina,  or  back  part  of  the  globe  of  the  eye  ;  a  picture  the  reverse  of  that 
in  the  outside  world,  upside  down,  right  side  left.  The  retina  is  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  optic  nerve  leading  to  the  brain,  that  gives  to  the  mind  a 
perception  and  conception  of  the  image  on  the  retina ;  not  that  the  image 
can  itself  be  taken  through  the  round  opaque  tubular  nerve ;  not  that 
there  is  any  material  picture  on  the  retina,  any  more  than  the  reflection 
from  the  mirror  is  a  real  picture  on  its  surface  ;  but  the  mind  has  capacity 


20 


to  reach  forward  and  take  perception  of  tlie  picture  truthfully,  but  takea 
it  restored  from  its  reversals  by  the  convex  lens  to  its  true  position,  as 
was  the  outside  reality ;  up-side  up»  and  dght  side*  right,  as  is  at  once 
verified  by  the  outreached  hand.     This  power  of  perception  is  something 
more,  and  quite  different  from,  the  materially  fed  animal  or  tree.     There 
is  no  protoplasm  here.    The  perceptions,   and  the  ideas  thus  derived 
through  all  the  several  senses,  are  alike  immaterial.     Through  the  eye, 
the  ear,  the  touch,  taste,  or  smell,  it  is  not  perceptible,  nor  conceivable, 
that  outside  matter  enters  into  the  brain,  yet  less  into  the  perceiving 
mind.     It  seems  more  reasonable  to  infer  that  the  mind,  which  by  its  will 
can  command  and  put  in  action  the  many  muscles  of  the  body,  through 
the  nerves  of  command  that  extend  from  the  bmin  to  tliem,  can  also  reach 
through  the  distinct  system  of  the  nerves  of  sensation,  wheresoever  im- 
pinged upon,  and  take  note  of  all  sensation.     Thus  doing  the  mind  is 
filled  with  perceptions,  conceptions,  ideas.    But  when  it  perceives,  thinks, 
compares  its  ideas,  recalls  its  memories  of  long  past  years,  forms  new 
judgments,  and  the  will  sends  forth  its  mandates,  v,e  are  not  to  believe  it 
is  carrying  on  material  operations,  before  the  muscles  have  acted  ;  that 
thoughts  are  the  bubblings  or  heavirgs  of  medullary  matter ;  or  as  elec- 
tritity  they  are  elicited  by  material  friction ;  or  as  the  chemical  corrosions 
of  a  battery  ;  or  are  any  other  material  production.     There  appears  no 
evidence  of    any  such    processes,    and    these    indicate  no  relationship 
with  mental  action.    The  memoiy  of  half  a  century  ago,  <  annot  be  a  re- 
calling of  the  matter  of  the  brain  of  that  time  ;  the  i>erceptions  taken  into 
the  mind  contained  no  material  element,  and  the  mind's  elat>oi-ations  of 
immaterial  perception  cannot  be  elaborations  of  matter,  or  produce  male- 
rial  thoughts.    Thought  that  ranges  instantly  over  creation,  cannot  be 
bound  by  the  limitations  of  matter.     Whatsoever  is  matter  must  have  the 
bounds  of  matter  ;  matter  must  liave  the  properties  of  matter.     Thoughts 
are  not  so  subject.     It  is  not  in  the  nature  of  matter  to  range  beyond 
itself;  to  look  to  the  past  or  future,  or  in  imagination  to  survey  the  world 
and  universe,  and  all  that  in  tliem  is.     It  is  not  in  the  nature  of  thought 
to  be  subjected  to  mechanical  or  chemical   tests.     If  thoughts  be  but 
matter  they  must  be  eliminated  by  the  body's  ever  busy  absorbents  as 
waste  material,  and  there  could  l»e  no  memory  of  them  ;  but  the  mind 
holds  not  her  rich  treasures  by  so  slight  a  tenure.     The  intellert  would 
then  sit  upon  a  throne  whose  base  would  be  incessantly  undermined  ;  nay, 
be  rapidly  swept  away,  since  the  new  tissue  supplied  to  the  brain  by  the 
life-process  would  not  rephvce  the  lost  ideas.     Immaterial  thoughts,  the 
immortal  mind,  is  not  carried  off"  as  waste  ami  etfete  matter  ;  as  sewage 
through  the  sewers  of  the  body.     Xewly  deposited  brain  tissue  from  the 
blood  would  not  restore  thought  that  has  vatiished.     Memories  are  not  as 
characters  written  on  the  sand  to  be  washed  out  by  ever  refluent  waves. 
The  memories  of  a  well  preserved  old  man,  whose  strength  has  not  failed, 
nor  his  eye  grown  dim,  make  him  a  being  compouutled  of  the  characters  of 
three  generations ;  with  mind  informed  liy  the  presstu-es  and  knowledge  of 


21 


them  all;  with  gathered  experiences  and  foretliought  that  make  him 
largely  prophetic  of  the  future.  So  the  Poet's  vision  has  seen  and  de- 
scribed such  an  oct(Jgenarian  ;  or  knew  him  and  sketched  him  from  life  : 

•'  Age  had  not  tamed  his  eye ;  that,  under  brows 
Shaggy  and  grey,  had  meanings  which  it  brought 
From  years  of  youth ;  which,  like  a  Being  made 
Of  many  Beings,  he  liad  wondrous  skill 
To  blend  with  knowledge  of  the  years  to  come: 
Human;  or  such  as  lie  beyond  the  grave." 

Wordsworth. 

As  the  visual  picture  entered  not  the  brain,  so  will  not  the  vibrations  of 
sounds  in  the  air.  The  speaker's  mind  is  filled  with  thoughts  which  he 
is  earnest  to  inculcate  upon  his  hearers,  and  vocally  he  gives  them  to  his 
thousand  listeners.  I  do  not  say  transfers  them,  for  he  has  not  parted 
with  one  idea,  though  they  have  got  all  he  has  spoken.  No  phosphorus, 
or  any  other  matter  has  left  his  to  go  into  their  minds.  His  voice  has  but 
made  vibrations  in  the  elastic  air,  which  otherwise  has  been  unchanged. 
These  vibrations  have  spread  concentrically  from  their  centre,  with  their 
ten  thousand  distinctions  of  modulated  words.  These  sounds  have  reached 
the  ears  of  the  listeners,  and  their  j^erceptive  minds  have  reached  forward 
through  the  auditory  nerve,  whose  extension  by  delicate  tibres  floating  in 
the  water  of  tlie  vestibule  of  the  ear  have  been  stirred,  and  given  to  the 
mind  the  perception  of  every  variation  of  the  voice  of  the  speaker ;  of  its 
formed  words,  its  inflections,  cadences  ;  its  tones  of  earnest  pathos  and  its 
joyous  or  sad  emotions  ;  aud  all  its  varied  meanings.  But  no  vibration 
of  the  air  has  reached  the  interior  of  the  brain  ;  indeed,  no  material  i  lea 
had  traversed  the  air  to  reach  the  hearers.  Air-borne  wavelets  of  words, 
or  conventional  signs  of  ideas  expressed  only  by  distinctions  in  sounds, 
have  reached  the  easily- moved  hairy  fibres  of  the  auditory  nerve,  and  im- 
parted motion  to  them  ;  but  there  the  material  motion  has  ended,  yet  the 
perceptive  mind  luis  caught  the  many  distinctive  meanings.  But  no 
motion,  no  sound,  no  matter,  has  entered  the  brain  by  the  auditory  nerve  ; 
for  the  nerve  tliere  embedded  is  constricted  in  passing  through  a  narrow 
orifice  in  the  skull ;  is  not  itself  floated,  or  tensioned,  to  transmit  vibra- 
tory mtJtion  ;  but  cut  oft"  from  the  air,  the  vibrations  of  which  have  been 
spent  u[)on  the  drum  of  the  ear  and  the  wonderful  apparatus,  and  water 
within  ilie  vestil)ule  ;  and  were  this  not  so  the  vibrations  of  the  air  are  not 
transmissions  of  matter  ;  l)ut  wlien  the  voice  has  sounded,  the  air  and  the 
ear  are  again  as  if  no  voice  had  spoken.  The  mind  has  taken  the  per- 
ception of  the  distinctions  of  sound  from  the  fibrous  extension  of  the 
auditory  nerve.  Had  the  same  words,  or  conventional  representations  of 
thoughts,  been  written  or  printed,  and  then  been  read  by  others,  these 
would  have  received  their  characters  pictured  on  the  retina,  without  the 
charms  of  vocal  expression,  and  alike  without  the  reception  of  any  ma- 
terial element  in  the  brain. 

It  is  obviously  th#  same  as  to  the  sense  of  touch.     The  finger  will  give 
the  pereeptioii   of  the   shape,    density,   temperature,  etc.    of  the   object 


22 


23 


touched,  but  no  matter  or  thing  will  be  transmitted  into  the  brain.    The 
mind  by  its  perceptive  power  in  the  brain  and  nerve  will  have  taken 
notice  of  the  properties  of  the  object,  and  formed  an  idea  of  it.    By  no 
sense  has  the  brain  or  mind  been  materially  fed.    Here  we  should  recol- 
lect the  physical  condition  of  the  brain.    It  fills  the  chamber  of  the  skull ; 
is  always  dark,  is  always  silent.    Therein  is  the  source  of  all  the  intel- 
lectual light  in  the  world,  yet  not  one  real  spark,  or  beam  of  light  has 
there  ever  glowed.    No  ray  of  light  can  depict  a  picture  therein  ;  no 
vibration  can  carry  a  sound  within  it ;  no  tasted  food,  or  touched  thing, 
nor  aroma  of  incense,  can  enter  there.     But  the  nerve  of  each  sense  has 
been  affected  by  an  outward  object,  and  the  perceptive  mind  has  reached 
to  notice  the  action  of  the  outward  thing  upon  the  nerve.     In  the  eye  it 
is  a  picture  thrown  by  the  light  on  the  retina  and  it  is  there  perceived  ; 
in  the  ear  vibrations  have  stirred  the  floating  fibrous  extension  of  the 
auditory  nerve,  and  there  they  have  been  perceived  with  their  varied  dis- 
tinctions ;  and  by  the  other  nerves  of  smell,  touch  and  taste,  the  per- 
ception has  been  at  the  point  of  contact.     The  miod's  command  reaches 
by  the  motor  nerve  to  the  remotest  muscle  ;  sensation  by  touch  may  reach 
as  far ;  and  there  appeara  to  be  no  reason  why  the  mental  perception  has 
not  reached  to  the  point  whence  such  sensation  is  said  to  have  come. 
The  mind  wills  to  move  the  toe,  and  it  has  at  the  same  instant  the  per- 
ception that  it  has  moved.     Indeed,  each  nerve  of  sensation  has  its  local 
duty  to  inform  the  mind  instantly  of  every  impingement  upon  the  surface 
over  which  its  fibres  are  spread.     This  it  can  only  do  by  the  mind's  taking 
notice  of  it,  so  that  sensation  implies  perception.    Tlie  nerves  at  the  stump 
of  an  amputated  leg,  when  irritated  there  give  the  i>erception  as  at  the 
foot  or  toe  to  which  the  nerve  when  unsevered  had  been  attached,  for  that 
had  been  its  established  duty  in  its  relation  with  the  mind  ;  and  the  per- 
ceptive mind  yet  adheres  to  its  original  consciousness,  and  still  takes  its 
perception  as  from  a  living  foot,  where  now  there  is  none.    The  percep- 
tion that  had  formerly  reached  the  extremity  of  a  perfect  nerve  comes  to 
consciousness  as  from  that  point,  though  the  nerve  has  been  touched  mid- 
way.    And  when  the  optic  nerve  is  involved  by  disease,  its  illusive  visions 
produced  by  disease,  appear  as  they  would,  if  truly  pictured  on  the  retina  ; 
and  so  if  the  auditory  nerve  be  so  involved,  the  illusive  sounds  appear  to 
enter  the  ear.     And  so  too  as  to  those  bright  visions  and  hymning  tones  by 
which  the  dying  are  often  preternaturally  visited,  showing  them,  in  ad- 
vance celestial  scenes  and  companionships  such  as  they  are  about  to  enter, 
their  outward  senses  seem  to  them  still  to  have  served  them,  and  they 
wonder  that  their  surrounding  friends  have  not  seen  and  heard  all  that 
they  have  so  intensely  enjoyed  ;  but  no  outward  sense  had  seen  or  heard 
that  the  mind  had  directly  perceived.     The  appropriate  nerve  always 
ministers  to  the  mind  according  to  its  original  appointment,  and  responds 
m  the  faithful  gentinel  only  from  the  assigned  post  of  duty,  and  there  it 
is  that  report  is  made  to  perception.    Sensation  and  perception  appear  to 
be  synonymous  and  simultaneous  and  at  the  same  point ;  but  the  concep- 
tion of  ideas,  and  the  mental  processes  of  thinking,  comparing,  imagin- 


ing, judging  and  willing,  are  carried  on  in  the  superior  brain,  by  which 
man  is  distinguished  above  all  other  creatures.  Physiologists  speak  of 
the  sensorium  or  central  ganglia,  below  the  cerebrum,  as  the  common 
centre  of  sensation ;  but  our  own  consciousness  when  thinking,  and  our 
penal  head-aches  for  over-much  thinking,  plainly  say  to  us  that  the  crown- 
ing and  frontal  hemispheres  of  the  brain  are  the  seat  of  thought  and 
mind.     It  is  the  mind  in  that  little  space  that  rules  the  world. 

The  reflective  anatomist  as  well  as  others,  is  struck  with  wonder  when 
contemplating  the  human  brain  as  the  seat  of  thought  and  sovereign  will ; 
yet  as  poet  he  must  speak  figuratively  :  He  exclaims  as  he  looks  upon  it, 

"Then  mark  the  cloven  sphere  that  holds 
All  thought  in  its  mysttrious  folds; 
Tliat  feeis  sensation's  faintest  thrill 
And  tlashes  forth  the  sovereign  will ; 
Think  on  the  stormy  world  that  dwells 
Ijocked  In  its  dim  and  clustering  cells! 
The  lightning  gleams  of  power  it  hheds 
Along  its  hollow  glassy  threads  I " 

Dr.  O.  W.  Holmes. 

Such  combination  of  body,  life,  mind  and  feeling,  are  indeed,  more  won- 
derful than  miracle,  and  justify  the  anatomist  and  poet  in  his  prayerful 
conclusion  : 

*'0  Father!  grant  Thy  love  divine 

To  make  these  mystic  temples  thine."— (J6  ) 

The  great  fact  is  never  to  be  forgotten,  that  the  body  is  fed  only  by 
material  food  ;  tliat  the  brain  and  the  nerves  are  also  fed  as  the  residue  of 
the  body  from  the  living  blood  ;  but  that  the  mind  is  ever  and  only  can  be 
fed  by  immaterial  perceptions  of  outward  and  inward  material  things, 
and  as  it  is  self-fed  by  its  own  immaterial  thoughts  and  inherent  emotions. 
How  amply  the  physical  brain  is  fed  by  the  blood  is  apparent  when  physi- 
ologists tell  us,  that  its  proportion  to  the  whole  body  is  as  one  to  thirty-six, 
while  one-fifth  of  the  whole  volume  of  blood  is  in  circulation  there. 

There  is  another  test  we  may  also  daily  observe  in  others  and  in  our- 
selves, showing  that  mind  and  body  are  not  alike  nourished,  namely,  that 
the  gross  feeding  that  expands  the  body,  does  not  enlarge,  but  ob- 
scures the  mind.  That  the  mind  is  usually  clearest  and  most  eftective 
when  men  are  abstemious  and  temperate,  provided  only  they  eat  enough 
to  keep  up  their  normal  strength.  Many  bright  minds  that  have  enlight- 
ened the  world,  would  never  have  been  its  shining  lights,  had  not  their 
bodies  been  frail  and  their  physical  organization  delicate  ;  indicating,  not 
that  the  body  and  mind  were  one,  but  that  the  body's  grossness  had  not 
overlaid  or  obstructed  the  free  thinking  and  reasoning  mind. 

The  power  of  mental  consciousness  and  his  capacity  to  think  constitute 
man's  great  distinction.  Mind  makes  him  man  and  lifts  him  above  all 
other  creation.  It  is  the  mind  that  yields  him  all  his  purest  and  truest 
pleasures.  We  say  that  the  eye  sees  and  the  ear  hears.  These  senses  are  but 
inlets  to  outward  sights  and  harmonies  ;  it  is  only  the  mind  that  perceives 


t 


/ 


■migf   Ml- 


Hud  enjoys.  The  trausiiortiiig  i>rospe€t  w©  look  ui>oii ;  tlie  landscape  t)!* 
lawn,  trots,  ri¥er  and  mountain  ;  or  the  music  tliat  cliarnis  us  with  iiule- 
finable  delight,  are  pleasures  iidierent  in  the  mind,  inborn  of  the  soul. 
Led  by  the  great  Dramatist  we  willingly  say  with  hira, 

»'Here  wUl  we  sit,  and  let  the  sounds  of  music 

Creep  InKour  ears :  Soft  stUlness and  the  night 

Become  tm  touches  of  sweet  harmony !" 

"8uch  harmony  Is  In  Immortal  souls." 

And  such  inner  sense  of  the  beautiful ;  our  moral  sense  ;  our  sympathy 
with  our  fellow  beings  ;  our  emotions  in  worship  ;  "our  sense  of  an  end- 
less being ;"  are  all  inborn  of  the  soul,  and  assure  us  ours  is  the  liarniony 
of  "immortal  souls."  Necker,  statesman  of  France,  also  reassures  us  of 
that  Shakespeare  so  beautifully  said;  "the  whisper  of  the  gales,  the 
munnur  of  waters,  the  peaceful  agitation  of  trees  and  shrubs,  would  con- 
cur to  engage  our  minds,  and  affect  our  souls  with  tenderness,  if  our 
thoughts  were  elevated  to  one  I'niversal  Cause."  It  is  thus  in  thought 
and  emotion  that  alone  we  can  rise  to  commune  with  our  higher  self,  witli 
the  highest  endowments  of  our  friends,  and  with  Deity. 

The  materialist  supposes  he  has  advanced  his  theory  when  he  tells  us  that 
it  has  been  found,  after  a  speaker  has  used  extraordinary  mental  exertions, 
an  analysis  of  his  urine  shews  an  increase  of  phosphorus  ;  and  this  is  in- 
ferred to  be  a  material  residuum  of  the  speaker's  spent  thoughts  !  The 
idea  must  be  that  phosphorus  is  the  matter  most  likely  to  be  mind.  Let 
us  apply  another  test,  not  material,  to  this  supiwsed  experiment,  the 
scrutiny  of  the  thinking  mind  itself.  The  exertions  of  the  si^eaker  were 
probably  much  more  physical  than  mental,  and  the  nsult,  if  true,  would 
be  more  properly  assignable  to  physical  causes.  Tlie  ideas  of  the  speaker 
ai-e  conjmonly  formed  in  advance,  in  his  study,  in  quietude,  and  the  best  of 
them  in  the  wakeful  hours  of  the  night,  when  the  body  is  in  perfect  repose. 
The  delivery  of  them  so  far  as  tlie  intellect  is  tasked,  is  more  the  easy  ex- 
ercise of  memory  than  the  formation  of  new  ideas.  But  to  make  the  de- 
livery of  them  impressive  the  orator  exerts  his  voice  ;  gives  violent  play  to 
the  lungs ;  uses  earnest  gesture  ;  accelerates  the  circulations  ;  produces 
perspiration  ;  and  it  would  be  an  obvious  consequence  even  if  there  were 
no  increase  of  the  phosphoric  deposit,  that  as  much  of  the  water  in  the 
blood  has  gone  out  through  the  pores  of  the  skiu,  which  would  otherwise 
have  diluted  the  urine,  that  tlie  phosphorus  appearing  in  it  is  found  in 
larger  proportion. 

Though  matter  be  essential  to  the  growth  and  transmission  of  all  life  ; 
though  matter  and  life  be  essential  to  sustain  the  mind  in  its  manifesta- 
tions in  this  worid  ;  all  these  three  are  of  very  distinctive  nature.  In  the 
plant  there  is  life,  but  no  brain  or  nerves,  nor  feeling  or  mind.  These, 
therefore,  are  not  necessary  to  the  phenomenon  of  life.  It  is  tlie  nourished 
blood  of  other  composition  than  vegetable  protoplasm  that  must  flow  and 
bear  the  life  sustaining  material  of  the  animate  Ijeing,  and  that  for  brain 
and  nerves  as  well  as  the  residue  of  tlie  body.  You  may  intercept  the 
mind's  perception,  and  life  will  go  on  ;  but  intercept  the  blood's  circula- 


25 


tion  and  the  excluded  part  is  killed.   Sir  T.  C.Morgan,  M.D.,  says:  "If  the 
supply  of  blood  be  cut  ofj'  from  a  limb,  by  means  of  ligatures  made  upon 
its  arteries,  sensibility  of  all  kinds  is  in  a  very  short  time  extinguished  ; 
and  the  part  dies,  and  undergoes  the  same  changes,  as  supervene  on  the 
death  of  the  whole  body."     "  If,  on  the  contrary,  the  circulation  continue 
uninterrupted,  and  the  ligature  be  cast  round  the  nerves  of  the  limb,  so  as 
to  cut  oflf  its  communication  with  the  cerebral  centre,  the  other  tissues 
will  continue  their  functions  uninterrupted  by  the  accident."     "  These 
counter-experiments  clearly  demonstrate  that  the  nervous  system  is  not 
the  fountain  of  life  to  the  rest  of  the  economy ;  but  receives  its  animation, 
in  common  with  all  other  tissues,  from  the  action  between  its  own  vessels 
^nd  the  circulating  fluids."     (Philosophy  of  Life,  217.)    Thus  the  incom- 
prehensible life  requires  matter  as  the  vehicle  of  its  manifestations ;  and 
the  incomprehensible  mind  requires  matter,  including  brain  and  nerves,  as 
well  as  the  life,  for  its  manifestations ;  but  the  distinctly  manifested 
actions  of  both  are  full  of  diversities  and  contrarieties.     As  life  cannot 
account  for  and  produce  matter,  nor  matter  life  ;  so  do  neither,  or  both 
together,  account  for,  or  produce  mind,  but  only  subsei-ve  it.     For  each 
the  Cause  can  only  be  logically  sought  in  a  Creator ;  and  for  their  wonder- 
ful combination,  and  concurring,  or  counter  actions,  in  the  being  man,  we 
can,  in  reason,  only  refer  ourselves  to  Him  who  transcends  all  and  knows 
all,  even  the  thoughts  and  mind  of  man.     That  mind  that  is  not  matter 
nor  the  life,  but  is  above  these ;  that  has  no  likeness  on  earth ;  proves 
itself  of  all  we  know  the  most  like  unto  God  who  is  a  spirit.     It  alone  in 
nature  reviews  its  own  consciousness,  as  under  an  inevitable  sense  of  moral 
and  religious  duty  and  accountability,  and  asks  and  answers  the  question, 
"My  soul  is  it  well  with  thee?"     If  there  be  another  such  being  in  the 
universe,  it  can  only  be  an  angel  in  heaven. 

Xavier  Bichat,  who  studied  and  wrote  at  the  end  of  the  last  century 
and  until  the  second  year  of  this,  and  had  much  experience  in  surgical 
practice  during  the  French  Revolution,  was  certainly  the  profoundest 
physiologist  of  his  day.  He  did  not  fail  to  perceive  that  the  human  mind 
was  something  different  and  higher  than  the  brain  and  the  nerves,  which 
he  regarded  as  but  material  instruments  of  the  mind.  He  considered  a 
want  of  harmony  in  the  two  superior  hemispheres  of  the  brain  as  cause 
of  imperfect  perceptidli,  not  by  the  brain,  but  by  the  mind  or  soul,  say- 
ing, "for  the  brain  is  to  the  soul  what  the  senses  are  to  the  brain;  it 
transmits  to  the  soul  the  impressions  conveyed  to  it  by  the  senses,  as  the 
senses  convey  to  the  brain  the  impressions  made  upon  them  by  external 
objects."  (On  Life  and  Death,  30-31.)  "If  both  (the  hemispheres)  do 
not  act  alike,  the  perception  of  the  mind,  which  ought  to  be  the  result  of 
the  two  sensations  united,  will  be  inexact  and  irregular."  (p.  31.)  He 
enquires  whence  arises  the  facility  which  our  sensations  have  of  under- 
going so  many  modifications,  and  answers,  "  To  conceive  of  it,  let  us  first 
remark  that  the  centre  of  these  revolutions  of  pleasure,  of  pain,  and  in- 
difterence,  is  by  no  means  seated  in  the  organs,  which  receive  or  transmit 
the  sensation,  but  in  the  soul."  (lb.  49.)    Thus  imperfect  perception  and 


•^G 


27 


.111 
I  111 


api>i-eheii8ioii,  and  indeed,  imperfect  intellectual  power  come  from  defects 
ill  the  material  instruments  tbat  seiTe  it,  but  it  is  to  l>e  said  that  the 
defective  structure  produces  deficient  mind  only  in  the  sense  Uiat  it  has 
served  the  mind  with  imperfect  perceptions,  and  hence  with  erroneous 
conceptions  for  its  use.  The  nature  of  the  mind  may  thus  be  the  same  in 
aU,  though  furnished  with  i)erception8  and  ideas,  and  exercised  and  de- 
veloped, as  variously,  as  the  number  of  human  beings.  Then,  again,  the 
physical  constitution  and  the  animal  passions,  as  well  as  the  emotions  and 
affections,  social,  moral  and  religious,  will  also  differently  affect  the  sensa- 
tions, perceptions,  and  pow-ers  of  reasoning ;  our  thoughts,  imaginations 
judgments  and  character,  and  yet  not  be  the  mind  that  thinks,  reasons, 
judges  and  acts.  They  are  most  important  parts  of  the  being  but  the. 
physical  can  be  no  part  of  the  mind, 

Yet  Mr.  Huxley  tells  us  tbat  our  thoughts  "are  the  expression  of  mo- 
lecular changes  in  that  matter  of  life  which  is  the  source  of  our  other 
vital  phenomena;"  but  he  states  no  reason  why  this  should  be  so; 
why  matter  or  life  separately  or  together  sliould  produce  thoughts.  He 
takes  no  notice  of  their  contrary  nature  and  operations  from  matter. 
Now,  as  we  have  seen,  the  process  of  life  gives  its  own  proofs  immeasur- 
ably surpassing  in  accuracy  that  of  the  microscope,  as  to  all  that  enters 
into  the  composition  of  the  plant  or  animal,  as  attested  by  products  in- 
finitely varied,  and  thereby  has  proved  all  protoplasms  not  to  be  bases  of 
the  same  nature,  and  that  life  uses  other  elements  in  her  structures  ;  so 
the  different  natures  and  actions  of  thoughts  and  mind  from  life  and  mat- 
ter, must  be  taken  as  proof  that  they  are  not  one  with,  nor  can  be  pro- 
duced  by  matter,  or  yet  be  the  life  that  has  subjected  matter  to  her  uses. 
The  life,  instead  of  producing  mind,  is  made  subject  to  the  mind,  as  to 
its  uses,  what  it  shall  be ;  whether  it  be  more  worthless  than  the  fester- 
ing chamel  heap,  or  in  purity,  perfection,  beauty  and  glory,  it  shall  be  the 
fitting  companion  of  immortal  immaculate  beings. 

Professor  John  Tyndall,  always  ardent  and  hopeful  in  scientific  dis- 
covery, does  not  leave  the  materialist  without  hope  in  the  future,  yet 
does  state  this :  "  I  do  not  think  he  is  entitled  to  say  that  his  molecular 
groupings  and  his  molecular  motions  explain  every  thing :  In  reality  they 
explain  nothing."  "  The  problem  of  the  connection  of  body  and  soul  is 
as  insoluble  in  its  modem  form  as  it  was  in  the  prescientific  ages." 
«'  The  passage  from  the  physics  of  the  brain  to  the  corresponding  facts  of 
consciousness  is  unthinkable."  (Fragments  of  Science,  119) .  True,  the 
manner  of  the  connection  is  unthinkable,  but  the  fact  of  such  connection 
between  very  dissimilar  things  all  must  admit  who  do  not  deny  the  evi- 
dences of  their  senses,  the  proofs  of  experiment,  and  of  the  mind's  testi- 
mony unto  itself :  and  the  higher  significance  of  mind  and  emotion  seems 

equally  obvious. 

The  mind  is  placed  in  closest  alliance  with  the  body,  but  is  of  different 
constituency  and  power.  Set  over  the  body  to  rule  it,  her  throne  is  in  the 
brain  whither  the  nerves  of  sensation  are  ever  giving  information  from 
withJut  and  within  ;  whence  her  judgments  are  ever  issued,  and  executed 
through  the  nerres  of  command.   Would  you  liken  this  to  the  telegraph  ? 


you  must  carry  the  comparison  to  include  both  operator  and  sender  of 
messages  ;  must  note  that  in  the  centre  is  the  mind  that  thinks,  and  that 
receives,  and  sends  the  messages,  and  commands  and  executes  as  well. 
There  is  still  the  mastery  of  mind,  ever  asserting  her  power  over  matter, 
and  her  own  likeness  unto  God.  And  though  so  small  a  speck,  there  is 
nothing  known  to  man  that  will  so  bear  to  be  put  in  comparison  with  our 
conception  of  Deity,  who  is  a  spirit,  as  the  immaterial  mind  of  man. 

It  is  not  to  be  doubted,  after  the  experiments  and  observations  of  Prof. 
Matteucci,  and  Drs.  Du  Bois-Reymond,  Carpenter  and  Radcliffe,  that 
electricity  pervades  the  nerves  and  muscles  of  the  body,  the  precise  ser- 
vice of  which  awaits  further  development,  but  is  supposed  to  be  identified 
with  the  ordinary  force  and  action  of  the  nerve  and  muscle.  Dr.  Rad- 
cliffe says,  as  the  result  of  his  investigations,  "  There  is  reason  to  believe 
that  all  kinds  of  electricity  act  upon  nerve  and  muscle  by  way  of  charge 
and  discharge,  the  charge  antagonizing,  the  discharge  permitting,  the 
state  of  action."  Whatever  may  be  further  ascertained  as  to  the  agency 
of  electricity  in  the  animal  economy,  of  this  we  may  be  assured,  that  it 
will  act  subserviently  to  life  and  to  the  will.  So  it  is  found  in  the  electri- 
cal eel  and  the  torpedo  fish,  in  which  life  largely  accumulates  it,  and  the 
will  discharges  it  upon  an  enemy,  in  electric  shocks,  but  only  so  long  as 
the  supply  lasts,  when  the  belligerent  thus  armed  must  await  renewal  of 
supply  by  natural  recuperation.  With  all  animate  creatures  rest  after 
fatigue  is  the  appointed  means  for  renewal  of  strength  to  muscle  and 
nerve,  to  become  fitter  instruments  of  the  will ;  and  that  is  to  say,  after 
the  exacting  will  has  ceased  to  enforce  wasteful  action,  the  life  process 
works  on  during  repose  to  restore  the  strength,  and  the  more  perfectly  if 
we  sleep.  The  strength  or  electricity  would  not  be  given  us  without  the 
life  give  it,  and  neither  is  to  be  identified  with  the  life,  or  mind  or  will. 

I  suppose  there  are  few  of  active  mind  who  have  not  the  consciousness, 
when  going  to  sleep,  of  those  sudden  nervous  throbs  that  tell  us  that  a  dis- 
turbed electricity  is  seeking  its  equilibrium  in  the  body,  and  thus  several 
times  defeating  the  desire  to  sleep.  This  occurs  at  the  moment  of  oblivi- 
ousness ;  shewing  that  the  mind  had  until  then  restrained  electrical  action; 
but  which  ensues  as  a  physical  action  in  the  body,  as  soon  as  the  mind 
ceases  to  rule.  Many  materials  concur  to  build  the  human  temple  and  to 
subserve  the  life.  The  blood  alone  has  its  more  than  dozen  elements;  its 
water,  albumen,  fibrin,  sodium,  lime,  magnesia,  iron,  &c.,  and  heat  and 
electricity  may  warm  the  body  and  aid  the  vital  functions,  yet  be  not  mind. 

And  our  minds 

•'  Are  not  wholly  braiti, 
MagneMiC  mockeries ;"    *    »    • 

"  Not  only  cunning  casts  in  clay  : 

Let  scleace  prove  we  are,  and  then 

What  matters  science  unto  men  ?'* 

Tennyson, 

Prove  man  is  worthless,  then  is  science  worthless  all. 

One  so  practical  and  learned  as  Dr.  Carpenter,  and  so  fully  informed 
upon  the  results  of  modern  scientific  investigation,  and  himself  writing 
as  a  life-long  teacher  of  physiology,  regards  the  brain  as  the  instrument 


28 


of  mind  other  than  itself.      "  The  physiologist  knows  fuU  well,  that  the 
immediate  operation  of  the  will  is  not  upon  the  muscle  but  upon  the 
brain."     "  We  have  not  only  evidence  of  the  excitement  of  nerve-force 
by  mental  agency ;  the  converse  is  equally  true,  mental  activity  being 
•xcited  by  nerve-force."    And  he  proceeds  to  say,  "  it  is  obvious  that  the 
view  here  taken  does  not  in  the  least  mUitate  against  the  idea,  that  mmd 
may  have  an  existence  altogether  independent  of  the  material  body  through 
which  it  thus  manifests  itself."     **  In  the  control  and  direction  which  the 
will  has  the  power  of  exerting  over  the  course  of  the  thoughts,  we  have 
the  evidence  of  a  new  and  independent  power,  which  is  opposed  m  its 
very  nature  to  all  the  automatic  tendencies,  and  which,  accordingly  as  it 
is  habitually  exerted,  tends  to  render  the  individual  a /rde  agent.''   (Phys- 
iology, sees.  585,  586,  588.) 
The  capacity  of  the  body  is  limited.    Its  growth  cannot  be  forced.    It 

ean  add  not  a  cubit  to  its  stature.     But  no  limits  can  be  assigned  to  the 
acquisitions  of  the  mind.     While  he  has  life  man  may  learn.     True, 
students,  ardent  and  ambitious,  will  often  sacriace  their  lives  in  the  pur- 
suit of  knowledge  ;  but  that  is  not  because  the  mind  has  taken  into  itself 
more  than  it  will  hold,  but  more  rapidly  than  the  frail  body  will  bear,  and 
in  manner  violating  the  laws  of  health  ;   those  laws  that  require  the 
exercise  of  the  muscles,  the  play  of  the  lungs  in  breathing  fresh  air,  and 
an  accelerated  movement  of  the  circulations,  of  the  assimilative  process, 
f  nd  of  all  of  life's  functions ;  and  due  rest  and  sleep.    The  versatile  and 
boundless  ranging  mind  must  wait  upon  the  limited  conditions  of  its  sub- 
servient companion  ;  by  wisely  doing  which  this  life  may  last  long,  and 
the  mind  ceaselessly  acquire  increase  of  knowledge  and  power.   But  ever 
the  master  mind  must  be  doing,  or  naught  is  done. 

Dr.  Carpenter,  as  a  purely  scientific  teacher,  also  speaks  of  the  soul  s 
relation  to  the  Infinite ;  and  of  its  constituting  one  of  the  most  distinc- 
tive peculiarities  of  man,  and  as  the  main-spring  of  human  progress. 
He  says  the  desire  for  improvement  grows  by  what  it  feeds  upon ;  "in 
the  higher  grades  of  mental  development  there  is  a  continual  looking  up- 
ward,  not  towards  a  mere  elevated  human  standard,  but  at  one  to  some- 
thing above  man  and  material  nature."  He  desires  to  participate  in  a 
spiritual  existence  ;  "of  which  the  germ  has  been  implanted  in  the  mmd 
of  man,  and  which,  developed  as  it  is  by  the  mental  cultivation,    *   *    ♦ 

has  been  regarded  by  philosophers  in  all  ages  as  one  of  the  chief  natural 
arguments  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul."  (Physiology,  Sec.  7. )  And 
he  concludes  his  work  on  Animal  Physiology  in  these  words:  "The 
philosopher  who  has  attained  the  highest  summit  of  mortal  wisdom,  is  he 
who,  if  he  use  his  mind  aright,  has  the  clearest  perception  of  the  limits 
of  human  knowledge,  and  the  most  earnest  desires  for  the  lifting  of  the 
veil  that  separates  him  from  the  Unseen,  lie,  then,  has  the  strongest 
motives  for  that  humility  of  spirit  and  purity  of  heart,  without  which, 
we  are  assured,  none  shall  see  God." 

While  I  would  thus  elevate  mind  to  its  truthful  distinction  and  pre- 
eminence, I  would  say  nothing  to  disparage  the  material  and  living  crea- 
tion    While  physicists  ascribe  aU  to  matter  ;  all  matter,  all  life,  all  raiiid. 


29 


and  nothing  to  God,  I  ascribe  all  to  Him  ;  yet  regard  matter.as  essential 
means  to  all  life,  and  to  the  exhibition  of  all  mind  upon  this  earth.  We 
see  God's  good  design  in  physical  nature,  and  that  design  we  must  rever- 
ence, and  learn  to  adore  Him  in  the  sublimity  of  his  works.  Without 
this  material  eai-th,  and  sun  that  lights  and  warms  it,  there  would  be  none 
of  the  life  that  we  behold  :  would  not  be  human  souls  to  people  heaven. 
Climate  it  is  to  be  admitted,  does  make  the  Esquimaux  and  the  Negro 
what  they  are.  Unfriendly  to  life  and  its  happiest  physical  development, 
it  is  also  unfriendly  to  intellectual,  to  moral  and  religious  culture  ;  and  it 
also  fails  either  in  the  productions  needful  for  man's  uses  and  improvement, 
or  produces  animal  and  vegetable  life  so  rankly  as  to  over-master  the  un- 
skilled native  until  he  shall  be  helped  by  the  stronger  and  more  inventive 
man  of  the  temperate  zone.  But  it  follows  not  that  the  mind  is  the  pro- 
duction of  the  surrounding  physical  causes,  but  only  that  these  have  not 
so  well  developed  the  instrument  the  minds  must  use  ;  and  consequently 
the  mind  itself  is  not  so  fully  developed. 

The  mind  it  is  that  is  ever  conquering  nature  and  moulding  matter  and 
ruling  life.  It  reclaims  the  earth  to  culture,  fells  the  forest,  drains  the 
morass,  destroys  wild  beasts ;  mines  the  fuels  and  metals ;  makes  and 
applies  iron  to  its  ten  thousand  uses  ;  constructs  railroads  and  telegraphs  ; 
creates  the  arts  and  sciences  ;  educates  mankind  generally  unto  a  higher 
civilization,  and  makes  a  large  proportion  almost  what  they  should  be  ; 
that  is  to  say,  learned,  temperate  and  wise,  lovers  of  man  and  worshipers 
of  God  ;  and  all  are  advanced  in  moral  conduct,  except  the  irreclaimably 
vicious.  The  task  remaining  before  our  humanity  is  to  endeavor  to  cause 
the  ixjople  to  approximate  the  standard  of  perfection,  and  if,  peradventure, 
we  get  a  majority  of  such,  the  world  will  have  made  inestimable  progress. 
And  why  should  we  not  all  strive  for  such  consummation?  In  every  branch 
of  business,  men  exert  a  wonderful  amount  of  common  sense  and  acute- 
ness  of  thought,  and  achieve  admirable  success.  Half  the  like  assiduity  and 
culture  directed  upon  their  own  minds  would  produce  a  transformation  of 
character  and  increase  of  intelligence,  that  would  excite  their  wonder  and 
the  admiration  of  the  world.  Mind  only  can  do  it,  but  mind  can  work  the 
consummation  ;  and  that  is  the  great  hope  of  all  thoughtful  good  men. 

In  all  ages  men  have  spoken  of  matter  and  mind  ;  of  the  flesh  and  the 
spirit ;  of  body  and  soul,  as  things  of  contrasted  nature,  and  as  at  strife, 
until  one  has  attained  the  rule  over  the  other  ;  and  if  that  rule  be  of  the 
flesh  or  the  sensual  passions,  it  is  a  dominion  of  sure  degradation  and 
early  destruction  ;  but  if  it  be  of  the  truthful  mind,  then  is  it  a  dominion 
of  peace  and  wisdom.  Paul  said,  "I  see  another  law  in  my  members 
warring  against  the  law  of  my  mind,"  with  the  sin  in  those  members  his 
sense  of  duty  was  also  at  war  ;  and  to  desist  from  fulfilment  of  the  sense 
of  duty,  was  to  him  intolerable  woe.  Mankind  have  always  made  such 
contrast  and  adopted  their  lesson  of  discipline  from  the  requisition  of  an 
exacting  conscience,  and  by  induction  from  surely  observed  facts.  And 
when  our  friends  are  with  us  in  life  what  is  it  that  so  much  engages  our 
attachment  and  love  and  veneration  for  them  ?  Not  surely  the  body,  ex- 
cept slightly  by  association,  since  it  is  the  temple  where  higher  excellences 


dwell ;  but-it  is  the  intelligent  mind,  the  loving  heart,  the  well  tried  vir- 
tues ;  and  when  death  has  taken  our  friend,  for  what  is  our  sorrow  ?  Not 
for  the  body,  so  little  distinguishable  from  other  bodies,  but  for  the  intel- 
lectual and  social  companion,  who  had  requited  our  love,  but  may  never 
again  ;  thi»t  instructor  and  adviser  with  whom  we  took  wise  counsel,  but 
shall  no  more  on  earth  forever.  It  is  for  the  social  and  good  and  generous 
mind  that  we  grieve  with  a  grief  that  refuses  to  be  comfoi-ted,  except  as 
w©  find  it  in  the  faith  that  assures  us  we  shall  meet  again,  never  again  to 
be  separated  ;  a  necessary  faith  of  human  consolation,  and  therefore  proof 
to  ourselves  that  our  minds  and  virtuous  affections  shall  be  immortal. 
This  was  the  testimony  of  Buckle,  as  to  his  own  experiences  and  reflec- 
tions after  ho  had  witnessed  the  slow  decline  and  death  of  his  beloved 
mother  ;  testimony  that  refuted  the  skeptical  philosophy  of  his  life  ;  and 
has  redeemed  his  memory  from  apparent  heartlessness,  and  made  it  very 
beautiful  to  those  whose  philosophy  grasps  the  inunortality  of  the  soul. 

Matter  and  life  are  always  untlergoing  changes,  and  both  in  the  human 
body,  kept  in  health,  will  live  through  length  of  happy  years ;  but  at  some ' 
time  they  will  hasten  towards  dissolution,  and  come  to  the  end  of  their 
organism  ;  and  the  life  will  only  thereafter  continue  as  it  has  l)een  ira- 
paited  to  offspring.  But  mind  or  thought  is  everlasting,  if  there  can 
only  be  found  imperishable  material  to  hold  its  expressions.  If  the 
printed  page,  or  the  canvas,  or  marble  will  endure,  the  thoughts  of  the 
author  and  artist  will  last  forever.  The  eternal  thought  can  then  only  bo 
assailed  through  its  allied  perishable  material ;  and  that  mind  shall  never 
perish,  it  only  needs  an  imperishable,  a  "celestial  body" ;  and  that  it  should 
be  translated  into  one,  or  live  independently  of  one,  should  be  no  more  a 
mystery  to  philosophy  than  that  the  himian  soul  has  existed  in  its  mortal 
habitation ;  is  not  more  questionable  as  within  the  power  of  the  Almighty 
and  His  fulfilment  of  the  logic  of  His  creation,  than  the  fact  that  a  blade 
of  grass  shaD  grow,  or  that  this  body  is  now  the  habitation  of  a  human  life. 

The  subject  of  this  discourse  might  be  continued  through  volumes,  and 
the  writer  be  all  the  while  dealing  with  as  veritable  realities  as  those  that 
occupy  the  physicist  or  naturalist,  whose  great  deficiency  so  often  is,  that 
he  becomes  so  wedded  to  the  material  that  he  disregards  the  mental  and 
moral  in  his  philosophizing,  and  is,  therefore,  possessed  of  but  half  the 
facts  needful  as  a  basis  whence  to  make  induction  of  all  the  great  truths 
of  Creation.  He  needs  to  know  more  to  become  wiser  and  more  charitable  ; 
and  the  metaphysician  and  theologian  also  need  to  knew  all  the  truths  of 
physical  nature  the  former  can  develop,  all  of  them  God's  tiuths,  that 
they  may  become  more  fully  informed,  and,  i>erhaps,  more  charitable ; 
Ihat  they  may  clearly  know  the  physical  works  and  laws  of  the  Creator, 
and  the  more  perfectly  love  and  adore  Him.  Each  class  is  in  possession 
of  numberless  invaluable  truths,  but  neither  possesses  so  many  as  it  should 
know  ;  and  this  is  partly  owing  to  the  wall  of  partition  their  hostility  has 
erected  between  them.  While  it  is  natural  that  each  should  cling  strongly 
to  its  convictions,  those  convictions  must  be  based  upon  all  facts  requisite 
to  truth,  that  tliey  may  endure. 

And  here  let  me  not  be  understood  as  making  a  general  charge  of 


31 


materialism  against  physicists,  for  I  am  happy  in  believing  that  the  great 
majority  of  physicists  are  not  materialists.  I  give  credit  to  all  who  dis- 
avow a  materiah'stic  faith,  including  Dr.  Huxley  ;  giving  credit  to  the  like 
disavowals  here,  there  is  no  materialist  known  to  me  in  this  Society.  I 
have  been  enabled  to  use  the  authority  and  facts  furnished  by  eminent 
physicists,  with  great  advantage,  to  sustain  the  views  expressed  in  tliis 
essay,  as  those  of  Bichat,  Morgan,  Carpenter,  Hohnes  and  Tyndall. 

While  the  drift  of  Professor  Huxley's  lay  sermon  favors  materialism 
there  is  that  in  "systematic  materialism"  that  repels  him  as  something 
pernicious.  The  last  words  of  the  sermon  are  these:  "  The  errors  of 
systematic  materialism  may  paralyze  the  energies  and  destroy  the  beauty 
of  life."  He  has  some  other  faith,  therefore,  which  preserves  him  from 
the  deadly  influence  he  deprecates,  and  the  loss  of  the  sense  of  the  beauty 
of  life  which  he  loves.  It  can  only  be  a  more  elevating  philosophy,  by 
his  concession,  that  can  preserve  to  us  a  sense  of  the  beauty  of  life  ;  may 
we  not  say,  "the  beauty  of  holiness  ?"  Such  good  fruit  must  be  proof  of  the 
greater  truth  of  the  higher  philosophy  he  conceives  and  believes,  yet 
does  not  explain  or  advocate,  but  has  sought  to  supplant.  Now  how  only 
do  men  attain  their  highest  sense  and  example  of  this  "beauty  of  life?" 
It  is  by  a  belief  in  the  immortal  life,  and  by  cherishing  the  highest  ideal 
of  perfection,  which  that  belief  ever  presents  to  our  apprehension,  with 
an  obedience  to  the  injunction  to  strive  to  be  perfect  as  the  highest  per- 
fection ;  even  looking  to  the  perfection  "  of  our  Father  in  heaven."  That 
cannot  be  the  truth  of  life  that  could  "paralyze  the  energies  and  destroy 
the  beauty  of  life."  Why  then  seek  to  build  up  a  philosophy  which  con- 
demns itself?  Why  seek  to  establish  a  theory  at  which  our  given  sense 
of  truth  and  beauty  revolts  ?  Why  seek  to  entomb  the  mind  in  matter, 
and  thereby  lose  our  own  soul  ?  The  useful,  the  beautiful,  and  the  per- 
fect in  God's  creation  attest  the  truths  thereof  and  that  it  is  His.  It  re- 
mains ever  to  be  a  sure  test,  by  their  fruits  are  all  things  to  be  known. 

I  would  now  leave  it  as  the  testimony  of  one  who  has  lived  longer  than 
the  allotted  three  score  years  and  ten,  not  unobservant  of  men,  nor  unre- 
flecting upon  the  question  of  the  wherefore  of  our  being,  with  a  mind 
consciously  open  to  the  reception  of  every  truth  presented,  for  all  that  the 
conviction  of  one  mind  may  be  worth,  that  the  doctrine  of  materialism 
cannot  be  adopted  as  a  belief  of  mankind,  until  men  shall  become  capable 
of  confounding  things  the  most  opposite  in  nature  ;  until  they  can  believe 
that  light  can  be  darkness ;  good  be  evil  ;  right  wrong  ;  not  until  men  can 
dissever  effect  from  its  due  cause  ;  logic  from  reason ;  creation  from  its 
Creator.  Not  until  then  will  they  confound  mind  with  matter.  All 
nature  demands  a  broader  and  truer  interpretation,  wherein  every  part 
shall  have  assigned  to  it  its  just  significance,  and  unto  the  whole  its  ad- 
equate import  be  ascribed.  Each  and  all  imply  no  less  than  that  there  is  a 
Creator,  and  that  the  human  soul  has  a  life  immortal.  If  the  soul  of  man 
has  not  this  significance,  then,  truly,  Creation  is  without  adequate  motive 
or  result  for  all  eternity.  But  if  we  be  children  and  heirs  of  God,  there  is 
a  sufficient  solution  of  the  purpose  of  our  being,  and  an  object  worthy  the 
glory  of  the  universe. 


